The first time I ever used IRC was via the official Worms 2 server. Granted, I didn’t know what IRC was at the time, but I owned Worms 2 and a dial-up Internet connection, and was curious. I was also friends with Kaf, who would be very keen for me to show off the chat function, even if I did insist upon losing at playing a few games of Worms 2 first.

Kaf was, to be frank, a lot bolder than me. He was strong, athletic, attractive and went to an all-boys’ school, which sounded fairly terrifying. I’m not sure if I believed all the stories he told me about throwing other students through walls and the like, but they were entertaining, and so was he, and a very loyal friend, to boot. He was more interested in WormNET than the actual game, because – as it turned out, although I’d had my suspicions – it was a way to talk to girls.

I wasn’t that interested in “girls”. I knew girls. Lots of my friends were girls. I’m still friends with most of those girls. Still, I liked making new friends and Kaf was good talker, and I’d let him use my keyboard for informal chat, although I did object to the use of “FUCK OFF YOU FUCKING WANKER” (a phrase used a lot on WormNET), which he shrugged off with, “you’ve got to have some fun in life.”

But it was my computer, my internet time and my copy of Worms 2, so I tugged the keyboard back off him like he was Jared in the e-mail scene of Dear Evan Hansen.

“But I haven’t told my joke,” he wheedled as I hastily tried to apologise to everyone. “Let me tell my joke.”
“Do you really want to tell one?” I said quietly, scrolling through the window. “Lots of people are telling jokes, but they all appear to be racist.”
“You shouldn’t have answered that guy who asked if you were German in German.”
“But I’m doing German GCSE, it was a chance to practice!”
“Fine,” he said, wrenching the keyboard from my hands, “I’ll tell my joke, and then you can chat afterwards.”

Before I could answer, he started writing.

okay so i know a great joke and this is how it goes so there are three women in a lift and it gets stuck and a genie appeared and granted them three wishes so the first woman goes i wish i was a hundred times smarter and she got out of the lift and the second woman goes i wish i was a thousand times smarter and she got out of the lift and then the third woman goes i wish i was a million times smarter and she turned into a man :))))))))))

Kaf

“But that’s not very funny,” I said meekly once he’d hit return and handed me back the keyboard.
“You don’t understand the joke,” he replied earnestly. “You see, it means men are a million times sma…”
“I know what it means, it’s just not funny.”
“People are laughing.”
“Nobody’s laughing.”
“Isn’t that what FOAD means?”
“Not as far as I’m aware.”

Kaf sighed.

“Like I said, you’ve got to have some fun in life.”
“You do,” I agreed. “But not like this. Not through swearing and telling sexist jokes.”
“What sort of joke would you tell, then?”
“Oh, something simple. Something like

Did you hear about the very think Saxon who scored? It was a goal from the narrowest of Angles.

an objectively better joke

or in the same vein.”
“But I don’t even understand that one.”
“It’s my favourite joke.”
“Mine was funnier.”
“Yours was sexist! If you’re going to be sexist on WormNET, you shouldn’t be doing it on my account!”
“Fine,” he huffed. “You fix it. I’m going to get some crisps.”

While he went to get some of my crisps, I tried – quite well, I thought, at least – initially to everyone for what my mate had said.

And that’s the first time I got called “GAY” on the Internet by someone I didn’t know. What a time to be alive.