How is an IRC channel like a Caribbean street-corner?

IRC and Caribbean street talk, both a result of diasporic realities, are public spaces in which clever word play, performance, and stream of consciousness conversation predominate. In the Caribbean, the Diaspora was a historical moment in time that brought disparate peoples together as slaves and indentured laboreres. Forced over across the Atlantic with materially nothing, cultural elements were revived and refashioned though such avenues as music, language, food, and religion to produce the dynamic character that now stamps Caribbean culture. Language and linguistic word play became an important element given the constraints on bodies, spatial movement, and time that slavery forced upon people

The Caribbean man-of-words currently inhabits various public spaces such as the street corner, the town square, and the corner store both in the Caribbean and in transplanted communities in North America Street talk is a richly complex social and linguistic site for entertainment, performance, the fabrication of legends, the cementing of friendships, for learning and expressing masculine codes of behavior, building reputation, and for making and unmaking political and economic alliances (Abrahams 1983; Wilson 1973). Talk and creative word play are king in spaces where men casually drop in and out throughout the day, mixing gaming with very public loud group conversations with quieter more private conversations that might take place "off to the side." Personal gossip mixes freely with meta-commentary while talk beholds and enfolds a range of tones, emotions, and topics. Play mixes alongside work and argument as business and political deals are informally fleshed out. Found both in rural and urban settings one neighborhood might hold a number of competing public zones for street talk. Sometimes sweet, sometimes grotesquely humorous, and other times spiteful, play and cleverness that often borders on the fantastical mark this form of talk. Not particularly "emotionally supportive" or grounded in much else but talk, its authenticity as a real space for social life would never be questioned.