It's not that I am a luddite or anything. Its asychonicity alone renders that rather implausible for many independent reasons. Like most on this site, I don't mind a bit of 'ow's ya father' once in a while but if on-line chess is more prominent in your life then perhaps someone could explain what the chat functions are about in the platforms we have at our disposal. Is it an outlet for gamesmanship only? As we all know, there are only two kinds of people in this world -academics and non-academic (classified as scum by academics and rightly so). So what function does chat have in short forms of an intellectual pursuit? I can see the person who came up with the idea was Male. Should they have been female then it would of course be called gossip and not chat.
Let me put this differently. Chess is a bloody complex game and usually you have nowhere near the amount of time you need, so who added a chat feature and what are you supposed to do with it? All I do is discuss post-modern history...admittedly that does tend to go down like a lead balloon. I've thought about chatting about Socrates and Marxism more recently? Am I in the wrong? Should I not go beyond superficialities of no interest whatsoever? If so, aren't I just losing time?
I would like to advise forum members that asking your opponent what the air speed velocity of an unladen swallow is? Will distract your opponent more often than you think. I even won a blitz game on time with that stunt. Asking them if they've ever had a boil on their semprini also causes confusion for those unaccustomed to Monty Python. Oh and offering unsound advice can help. I told one opponent when I grew up there was a TV ad saying ' a Mars a day helps you work, rest and play', so if you have a Mars a day, your rating will go up. I told him my ELO rating is about 370 points higher, not that I ever study the game or play often, I just have a Mars bar before the game, which then fuels my attacks in the game, I don't let it bother me that I put on over 4 stone. Ratings matter more than poor health and death in my opinion. He claimed Snickers would improve your rating more, to which I retorted Minstrels would beat them both and some how we lost track of the game and neither gave a toss about the result....but before I went through the post-game analysis I bought a Mars and took a chunk out it, using it as a guiding light of sorts... . It helped me learn that leaving my queen en prise for 7 moves isn't good and that I really should be able to spot a mate in one in less than 23 minutes.
Mark