Before social networks, there were chats. I've spent a fair amount of time chatting on IRC.

It was definitely a different time. Internet wasn't ubiquitous, numbers were far more manageable. Above all, we could choose our own identities.

There weren't profile pictures, there was just a nickname: everyone could choose exactly how to appear to others. Without any connection to the physical world, everyone could be exactly the person they wanted to be.

In this context of self-determination, chatting was a dialogue of free minds. Our physical shell was not part of the equation, unlike what happens in the real world. When we are face to face with someone, body language and physical appearance play a significant role, consciously or not.

This leads to an interesting contradiction: the thicker is the wall that divides us, the more we are free to communicate.

Thinning the wall, we lost a bit of poetry.