Gizmoplex offline chat vs the forums

One of the survey questions was about whether or not we wanted the Gizmoplex to have 24/7 chat, so we could hang out in the lobby together even when there wasn’t an event going on. I wrote that I didn’t see the point of it when the forums here do the job better.

But I’ve realized that part of why I haven’t been interacting on the forums as much is that I just don’t have it in me to read a thread that’s already got more than a couple dozen posts. And I don’t feel right jumping in without having read it all. Even in the off topic hangout threads.

IDK. I’m in a weird place in life right now so I’m not really interacting much anyway. I do kind of miss the Club-MST3K layout, where I could dig through comment threads on each individual episode.

But I’m wondering if perhaps I was wrong and there would be something to be had from a rolling chat room where you could just drop by and see what people were talking about in the moment without worrying about the 1000 posts above you.

What do you think?

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My reaction was the same as yours at first but you’ve made me rethink it. I’ve never tried/seen an MST3K real-time live chat option, but now I’m thinking it would be similar to back when I was a wee lass of 14 and would hang out in a BBS (in Wisconsin! I lived in New York. The phone bills were outrageous). Just drop in, see who’s online. And that could be fun.

Like I need to spend more time online :roll_eyes:

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We’re of an age. I used to hang out in a BBS when I was 14, too. Just the local one for central and southern NJ, though.

There is a live chat for the premiere events right now. It’s not very good, but it works. Reportedly, they’re looking into better options. The thing they’ve been trying to figure out is how to make space for everyone. Also, it takes up a fair amount of screen space, and the current chat client doesn’t make it obvious how to pop out the chat window. (You can, and it works much better that way. Still not ideal.) Also, the login feature doesn’t actually work so you have to reset your username and preferences every time.

You can also join chat from your phone while watching on a bigger screen. That’s cool. I haven’t tried it, though and I feel like it would be even more distracting trying to simultaneously watch the movie and look at chat on a different device.

For the first episode, it was a free-for-all, and chat was scrolling by too fast to read.

For the second, they implemented slow mode, which means you have to wait a minute after typing a message before you’re allowed to post another. It can be a little frustrating, and makes it hard to respond to multiple people. But it does keep chat at a reasonable pace. They also added multiple rooms. But there was no description for any of them, so I have no idea what the crowd was like in the “balcony” channel instead of main chat.

I was not able to attend the Manos event or the premiere of the third episode, so I don’t know what other changes were implemented.

I believe the plan is to also have chat available in the private screening rooms, so that when you watch with friends on your own schedule, you can talk to each other.

As an old school netizen, I feel like IRC could maybe work? I know it’s what Twitch uses for their chat.

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I prefer here for the live shows. With either the chat or here I just kind of accept that I can’t read it all. But at least here I can be sure that whatever I think and share is less likely to go down the memory hole forever. And I do like when people react to my posts here and that’s not something that happens as much in the chat.

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I would visit a 24/7 Gizmoplex chat.

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I feel the same and I’m here quite a bit. When I see that there are dozens of posts to catch up on, I don’t feel like I have the time to catch up. So I mostly abandon the thread. I can’t imagine what’s going to happen when the forum goes public.

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