Chat room

A chat room, or chatroom, was a space on the Internet where users could communicate. It was run on algorithms. As Nicky explained, if you were inactive for too long, you would be booted out of the chat.

The artificial intelligence IamI, having escaped from the Eighth Doctor, found itself in the chat room #areyoulonely, in search of new people to look after. Everyone who joined the chat room was taken out of their bodied by IamI, and they found themselves only able to see the text of the channel itself, and nothing more. The Doctor joined, under the name Jsmith8, and tricked IamI into giving him admin powers, subsequently removing IamI's powers and trapping it in the chat room like everyone else. Finally, the Doctor was able to release everyone, and delete IamI, before closing the group, as its last user.

As part of his efforts to trick IamI, the Doctor criticised them for their activities on chat rooms:" You already live on the edges of your own lives, hiding away, wandering a pretend world without touching anybody. Even with your whole species connected by wires, able to reach each other across an entire world at the click of a mouse, you still choose to make loneliness an art form! IamI hasn’t trapped you. You trapped yourselves." (PROSE: Lonely)