> For me, part of it is that I want to talk to my friends, and I don't want to talk to groups of people I don't especially care for. If I see a chat room consisting of Stephen and eight other people I have no interest in, I'm more inclined to go insult Stephen over AIM than to go insult him in the middle of a busy room of people I have nothing to say to. That might sound cold, but it's frankly honest, and it's not like there are two people I want to talk to and six hojillion peons. There are very few people who actively irritate me, so a lot of it simply becomes the noise level. It's not that I don't like the people so much as I simply am not interested in what they have to say, and don't want to try to sift through it. In the older, calmer days of chat, that wasn't so much of an issue.

I couldn't have said this better myself, and it clarifies my own statements about why I talk on AIM more than in chat these days.

> Another point is that now I can see who's in chat before going in. So if I see Stephen sitting there idle and eight people I'm not interested in, I simply won't go in.

I agree with this too, and now that you've identified such an easily-solvable problem for me, I plan to be a lot more active in opening a room (private, if necessary) and staying in there in case other people show up, rather than just leaving every time there isn't anybody there I want to talk to. This is my New Year's resolution, either four months late or seven months early, whichever you prefer.