No, you just don't know what Microsoft Chat is. Here it is in its natural habitat:
This is also known as Comic Chat and is a chat application developed by Microsoft Research back in the '90s when IRC was all the rage. The unique feature of Comic Chat was that it could create comic strips out of regular IRC convos. Here it is side-by-side with a modern IRC client:
Of course, it doesn't play along with modern IRC software very well. IRC originally supported only three channel member statuses: operator, voiced and unvoiced. This turned out to be not enough and therefore more statuses have been added. The client doesn't like that - messages from channel members who happen to have some of the new statuses are just plain ignored by the comic view, although they display just fine in the text log view.
I have even heard of developers breaking Comic Chat compatibility with their software just for the sake of breaking it e.g. by adding a control character in a way that is fully compliant with the IRC specification, but unexpected by this client.
