{
  "video_id": "reddit_1tt2bwx",
  "channel_slug": "artificial",
  "channel_handle": "r/artificial",
  "title": "In 1997 I built a chatbot for an IRC channel. I shut it down when people started preferring it to talking to each other.",
  "url": "https://www.reddit.com/r/artificial/comments/1tt2bwx/in_1997_i_built_a_chatbot_for_an_irc_channel_i/",
  "external_url": "https://tjcrowley.substack.com/p/fun-with-markov-chains",
  "upload_date": "20260531",
  "published_at": "2026-05-31T17:55:56+00:00",
  "transcript": "It was called Vlad. I wrapped a C program called MegaHal in Python, fed it every message from a #gothic IRC channel, and let it learn the community's speech patterns. It developed what I can only describe as an illusion of being extremely lucid — the outputs only made sense as inside jokes, but people couldn't tell the difference.\n\nI pulled the plug when I realized the channel was talking to Vlad instead of each other.\n\nTwenty-seven years later I'm applying the same lesson to a new project: stick to business, no chatter.\n\n\n\n--- Top Comments ---\n\n\n[24 upvotes] That's a fascinating story because it happened long before modern LLMs existed. It highlights that people aren't necessarily drawn to intelligence they're drawn to responsiveness, attention, and familiarity.\n\n[8 upvotes] IRC in 97’ absolutely brings back some wild memories. Much of it actually reminds me a little bit of reddit. How you would have different servers with different topics and people going back and forth about random shit.\n\n[6 upvotes] irc is still alive. See you on [libera.chat](http://libera.chat)",
  "transcript_chars": 1083,
  "ingested_at": "2026-06-01T01:30:23.128161+00:00",
  "source": "reddit",
  "yt_meta": {
    "score": 55,
    "upvote_ratio": 0.87,
    "num_comments": 12,
    "author": "Dependent_Run_6410",
    "is_self": false
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}