What the hell is "I Chat With Fools?"

Glad you asked.

It all started with a dream. A web developer known only as "Disgruntled" conceived a site where people could anonymously share stories about the fools they work with, served, and dealt with on a daily basis. Where the day to day annoyances of working life could be chronicled. laughed at, and commiserated at. Where he could make tons of money on ad revenues. The site was called "I Work With Fools," and its rusting hulk can still be found online at iworkwithfools.com.

During its multi-year existence, IWWF became a safe haven for misfit workers of all stripes, and more than that, a community. Disgruntled encouraged his readers to comment on "the daily rant" and share their thoughts, and eventually the conversations branched out into topics completely unrelated to work. Nothing, and I mean NOTHING was off limits. Which brings us to Poser.

Nobody knows who Poser really was. Some say it was Disgruntled having some fun at the regulars' expense. Most of the regulars were accused at one time or another of being him, and maybe the accusations were right...who knows? But Poser was fond of posting under other peoples' nicknames and causing trouble. Some of it was humorous, in the vein of making an avowed Communist lavish praise upon Geroge Bush. Sadly, most of it was just plain potty-mouthed trash. E.D. (explosive diarrhea) became a daily buzzword, since most of Poser's victims seemed to suffer from it in one form or another.

Poser could have easily been stopped, or at least slowed down, had Disgruntled just password-protected the site. But he never did. Some viewed this as proof positive that he was Poser. Personally I think he just enjoyed watching the chaos that Poser stirred up. Ironically it was in the end not E.D. but the spectre of Copyright Infringement that ended the glory days of IWWF. Several lengthy quotations from "The Great Gatsby" and various online encyclopediae got posted, and Disgruntled cut off comments from the users. Shortly thereafter, he also stopped publishing rants.

When the site stopped allowing comments in 2005, A small group of regulars got together here in order to keep in touch and maintain friendships. And that's how ICWF was born. We've shrunk in numbers over the years, with many former regulars finding less tolerant workplaces or losing interest. But the few that remain show no signs of stopping - unless of course Trekkie Monster finally goes postal and gets himself locked up (in which case there might not be anyone around to run the server) or finally caves into temptation and stupidity and goes to live with DizzyLiz in Florida (in which case he might not be in physical condition to run the server).

In August of 2008, TM moved the site from an old, discarded Pentium box from a former employer. running off of his home DSL connection to its current home, a professionally hosted website physically located in, if I'm not mistaken, Malaysia. He also changed it from Movable Type to PHPBB to reflect its gradual change from a personal blog to a general forum.

Welcome to IChatWithFools.com. You're very welcome to join us. Just click on "The Forum" and register on the forum.