If it's raining and miserable outside and you can't be bothered to pop down to your local for a pint, you could log onto the web instead and drop into AOL's virtual pub.
This online tavern is one of AOL's many themed chat rooms. It might not serve real beer but it does have a virtual jukebox and, unlike your local, it's not full of smoke and you can chat for as long as you want without getting slung out by some bad-tempered landlord.
These kinds of innovative chat services are now common on the web. Virgin Net offers more than 200 themed rooms for everyone from teenagers and gays to senior citizens - or "silver surfers" as they are now known.
Yet chat is not always what it claims to be. Rooms might be billed as an opportunity to discuss politics and current affairs. But often they are little more than virtual pick up zones. Other visitors might profess to be interested only in the goings-on at Westminster but the majority are frequently web lonely hearts desperately looking for a bit of cheap cyber-foreplay.
Although it is used as an easy opportunity for virtual flirting, chat still manages to operate successfully on a number of other levels. For example, there are plenty of educational chat rooms online and a great many people believe chat fulfils an important social role.
Take celebrities. They love chat and are queuing up for more. Everyone from David Beckham to Dickie Bird has done one, usually to please sponsors or promote new books and CDs. PR advisers adore them too, because celebrity chats are moderated (marketingspeak for censored) so there is no risk of anyone being stitched up in a traditional tabloid way.
Last year when Monica Lewinsky came to London to publicise her book at the height of Zippergate, she agreed to do a moderated online chat with AOL UK. Her US spin doctors decided it would be a lot safer than throwing her into a live Newsnight studio where she could have been savaged by Jeremy Paxman. As it was, she broke down at Harrods under the pressure and the entire media schedule, offline and online, was scrapped.
But what do ordinary online punters make of their opportunity to chat anonymously for as long as they like with complete strangers? "People like the idea of owning a separate identity," explains Virgin Net's assistant community producer, Pete Mitchell. "In a chat room, no one sees what you look like. People can just be whoever they want to be."
Most web-based chat rooms encourage surfers to choose new identities. It's like instant cosmetic surgery. There are hardly any chat rooms left where you are encouraged to be yourself and use your own name. If you log onto Active Worlds, you can chat as a dinosaur or as a robot and move around and approach people in shiny new virtual worlds. At DoBeDo you can choose to become a cowboy if you like, and roam freely across the online prairies of DoBeDo country, chatting to other cartoon characters.
For many net users, chat rooms offer a break from the restrictions of ordinary offline life. Chat is really nothing more than good old fashioned escapism in a different guise. It's a virtual masked ball with the attraction of a traditional fairground ride.
But many people are still more than happy to denigrate chat. Often chatters are labelled as social misfits. They are dismissed as the maladjusted outcasts of the offline world and the cruel label of "Billy No Mates" often gets put about. But chatting is not the preserve of the socially-estranged, and anyway, would it matter if it was?
Chat can and frequently does bring families closer together. It helps to construct new friendships across age-old cultural divides. It consoles the lonely and it throws a social lifeline to the house-bound.
In fact chat is whatever you want it to be. It can be deadly serious and it can be wonderfully trivial. You can chat about anything from the health of a pet hamster to the adventures of Buzz Lightyear and the complete works of Amadeus Mozart. It is constantly innovating too.
Internet relay chat (IRC) is extremely popular at the moment. Most people swear by it. But some critics complain the software can be tricky to use and IRC users are renowned for getting grumpy with any new comers.
One of the latest chat products is the much-hyped Gooey. Download the free software and rove across the net, chatting with other Gooey users. It will let you send and receive files, watch videos and receive up to date news reports from traditional media outlets like Reuters. But it's not all good. Just ask a Mac user what they think of Gooey. A Mac version has been promised but so far one has failed to emerge.
Whenever you enter a live chat room for the first time -and it is definitely worth it for the experience - it's hard not to be momentarily transfixed by the torrent of text messages rushing down your screen. It's a voyeur's paradise.
Whatever the time of day, wherever you are, millions of people are in chat rooms, chatting away. There is no clearer evidence that the web is revolutionising communication.
Whether it's educated debate or showbiz gossip, people are talking more freely on the web. The traditional tight British lip has been killed off in cyberspace and chat, despite its many flaws, offers a Speaker's Corner for everyone. And if you don't like it, you can just click off.
