> Wow, this is really interesting. When I first came to chat more than two years ago one of the things that made me come back was the friendly atmosphere I encountered. Specifically, people greeted me with "exclamation points and happy welcomes" my first day in chat. And it was really cool that people stopped what they were talking about for a brief moment in order to say hi to me. It made me feel special. But I wasn't anyone special; not yet, not really. I hadn't "made it" yet - I was still most definitely a newbie for nobody at all knew who I was.
>
> This doesn't occur anymore.
>
> What happened?

We were just having a discussion about this (albeit in a different context) earlier today in the evil selfish elitist private room. Basically what it boils down to is, chat is too busy for that. By and large, it's annoying when someone comes in and the next two screensful of chat consist almost in their entireties of "hi." So quite a lot of us don't "hi" anymore as a way of not contributing to the problem.