I can't believe it's really gone for real. It was working right up until, last week maybe. I don't know why my account lasted so long, but now it's gone for good. The IM service is no more. The long-dead email that was my account that I literally used since 2000 is just a bit of detritus in my mind. [abacus@gothcities.com, yes, there was a goth-flavor geocities parody email server]

Now it's...skype. Man. I just can't really use skype. I jumped ship from signing in to AIM and MSN IM from different clients for Trillian in 2004 and never looked back. Until Digsby and pidgin, then I switched, haha. But the idea of one service using one client is really frustrating! Never mind that I only ever sign in to gchat, my AIMs long forgotten. I also just....

There's this weird facebook-y vibe I get from skype. Like, you're supposed to talk to EVERYONE from skype, not just internet pals, or you parent's email account, but also PHONE. CALLS. like, the triumph of the dial up modem over the phoneline was a victory for me; now phones can interrupt my internet? Ugh.

Skype is also a huge resource hog. so is dropbox. I NEED dropbox, and my other hoggy programs [y'know, drawing programs and browser windows] I don't need skype to hog, when I have lighter programs that can do IM, but not skype's protocol.

I also hate the guilt-tripping it does when you quit skype, like, eff off I'm QUITTING. SKYPE. I clearly don't want no receive phone calls right now so stop you damn pop-up warnings. Skype just seems like a horribly bloated, creepy-corporate, user-guilting piece of software. It's like using the AOL browser/IM/internet-sign-in bundle just to get IMs when you have wireless and firefox. :/

I just don't like it at feel irritated that it's the protocol that everyone uses for casual real-time chatting. Some mega crank is about to rappel into my comments section to preach about IRC, but I said "casual real-time chatting", IRC is a little to heavy-user for most people who just want to chat with their palsies, and I never made wide use of it so I'm pretty stumped myself when it comes to that one. I'm not looking for solutions, I just want to complain, really, about having to change a service that I and so many people used because some execs got their fancy sportscar of a sub-company. =o=