I don’t have a home on the internet for the first time in two decades. After the Elon Musk circus, the failure of Threads, the disappointment of BlueSky, the headache of Mastodon, and the lack of alternatives, I am returning to blogging.
It's interesting to think about how many online communities have appeared and disappeared over the years. It's like compressing 100 years of urban planning into 10. The internet has a way of performing lossy compression on just about everything that's dumped in or jumps in. I remember Instagram before it had ads, Twitter before it had hashtags, and Sherry Turkle before she was writing about the dark side of the internet. There was a time when we felt we could leave our bags at the portal and soar into cyberspace as angels, pure, with good intent in our hearts and an uplifting choir in our heads. Well, just like at any airport, we discovered that we can't travel without our baggage.
I hope you have had a mostly positive experience here so far. I'll read further up to find out.
“I wish these names were anonymized; they’re not” - i laughed out loud! love this piece, it made me so nostalgic. brb have to go dig through my own internet archives
My heaaart. Deeply feel this trajectory and all the feelings that go with it 💜
Hi Dizzy
It's interesting to think about how many online communities have appeared and disappeared over the years. It's like compressing 100 years of urban planning into 10. The internet has a way of performing lossy compression on just about everything that's dumped in or jumps in. I remember Instagram before it had ads, Twitter before it had hashtags, and Sherry Turkle before she was writing about the dark side of the internet. There was a time when we felt we could leave our bags at the portal and soar into cyberspace as angels, pure, with good intent in our hearts and an uplifting choir in our heads. Well, just like at any airport, we discovered that we can't travel without our baggage.
I hope you have had a mostly positive experience here so far. I'll read further up to find out.
Best wishes,
Mark
“I wish these names were anonymized; they’re not” - i laughed out loud! love this piece, it made me so nostalgic. brb have to go dig through my own internet archives
Haha thanks for reading & laughing along! Very curious what you’ll dig up in your archives 🥲
Wow the Neopets throwback really just got me! The ice cream parlor game felt like my second after school sport 😂🙈