Sarah Jamie Lewis"The data you have given us is too valuable to let other people freely read it"
"Your web browser is rendering content in a way that we think is morally wrong"
It's just pathetic at this point.
I miss the old internet, hanging out in irc channels, posting in small forums, wasting an afternoon jumping from niche site to niche site, trying to track where you were in a haze of dozens of browser windows.
A set of places, and people. True connection.
But even the modern web held some resemblance of that.
As many friends as I met in weird irc channels and niche forums, I met similar numbers on Twitter.
Now all those warm, welcoming places exist only in the past.
Part of me hopes we can recapture some of that...but I fear those days are gone. They were a beautiful bubble destined to pop.
Where once stood a diverse sprawling forest filled with mysteries now stands a managed woodland. Same raw materials, an entirely different experience.
We are not the same world. We are not the same people. Our relationship to this thing has changed.
I fully realize that I am getting older and nostalgic.
But I was once young, and naive, and truly believed this thing would save us.
Michael Gurski@sarahjamielewis I'm nostalgic, too. But IRC still lives. Channels have had to hop a few networks over the years, but OFTC still exists, and libera took the place of FreeNode after the hostile takeover. I think I miss Usenet most of all, even after the Eternal September.
@emag To better put it...IRC still exists in the same way that the house I used to live in while at university still exists - sure I could go back there, but the friends and the times that happened there are gone, the weirdly shaped walls and odd sized rooms all now subdivided into neat little apartments. A different place.
@sarahjamielewis I guess I'm lucky that the communities that I'm in have been more a ship of Theseus over the years. There are still original parts, but new parts, too, but it's still essentially the same place. Some because they're *really* insular, but some because they're specifically broad enough. And that's with maybe a decade of non-active participation during normal hours due to $job[-1] not allowing access.