Missing Ye Olde Pre Social Media Internette

Friday, January 14, 2022 - 1:22 PM

Blah, blah, wanna write stuff/DO SOMETHING/am bored/nostalgic for LiveJournal etc after talking with Tails about Ye Olde Pre Social Media Internette the other night (Did you know LiveJournal has an app!? Wild.)

I miss a lot of the quality of life stuff from pre-social media internet. The longer form leading to writing out stuff being more of a meditative, introspective action. Less pressure to Perform in general (though there was still definitely a performative pressure). The fact that instead of Algorithm Approved Content you could just get a personally cultivated, temporally ordered mix of stuff from your actual friends and stuff you were actively interested in. The fact that small communities were able to be chill and thrive and not be absorbed into a massive mooshy amoeba. I miss being able to find small niche forums and to explore independent individual blogs. I miss fansites and webrings, and I miss being able to see what my friends are ruminating on to the void easily and without missing anything because it's buried in Sponsored Content.

It might've taken years longer for me to figure out I'm trans, and to understand what my gender identity means to me without the transition blogs I devoured, first as an interesting record of someone random's experience, and then to try and figure out what all this I was discovering inside myself even means, and how others cope with it. Turning the emotional bees buzzing inside me into something I could understand. Giving me an understanding of my options, and what to expect. Helping me form a plan for my own transition, no matter how long that road was going to be.

I miss people having their own spaces on the internet. Islands they carved out to express their interests and passions, to speculate, to develop their thoughts. Not just to contribute to an endless deluge.

Def a bit of old man yelling at cloud energy on this one, but yeah. I'm dissatisfied with how things are structured, and I wish there was a good way to push back. And like, there's a certain amount of, "Be the change you want to see in the world," but also. You can't endlessly create. You can't be the sole voice of the world you're looking for. We all need to take breaks, we all need to rest, and we all need to be able to recharge and passively experience good things sometimes, too.

I'm not totally sure where I'll post this. Like, I'm writing this with the thought I'll post it somewhere, but I don't honestly know where I'll do so at the moment. Part of the point is to just simply write more, blog more, have my thoughts more ordered and face them outward more. Part of the idea is to model the things I'm talking about missing. But if the medium is the message, how does that translate? Especially when you're complaining about the options you have for the outlet?

Missing Ye Olde Pre Social Media Internette - Sonic