the internet was fun for me from, um, maybe 1994-1999. the glory days of prodigy and aol in the mid-90s, usenet (alt.music.marilyn.manson, anyone?) before it was gobbled up by the kraken that is google, the simple joy in finding a working dial-up number, TOS’ing people who pissed you off, chatrooms that weren’t full of spammers, creeps and pervs. well, at least that we knew of. we found information online. we found a community of people who were like us, we had our own norms, language, blah blah blah get off my lawn.
speaking of usenet, the term “eternal september/september that never ended” was bandied about when aol users started flooding usenet. back in the day, kiddies, when i walked to school uphill through piles of snow both ways, there was something called netiquette. that may sound quaint and old-fashioned now, because it is. but back then, we took it very seriously. there were rules, dammit, and you were expected to be polite and conform to community standards when you ridiculed someone to tears. eternal september pretty much represents the steady decline of behavior, discourse, and intelligence on the internet in general.
because, you see, it’s not fun anymore. the internets is for research, for news, for work – in short, another job added to my list of jobs. get through this update, have to read this, have to post that. it’s time-suckage. it’s creepy and stalkerish, in ways that the initial chatroom a/s/l questions didn’t even come close to. it’s scary, racist, homophobic, and illiterate. commenting is reduced to “U STUPID SUXXX UR WRONG” “ur just jeolos” “die psychotic librls” “girls be ready with a few things open. bottle, arms, legs” and so on. and THIS is the world i’m expected – as everyone else is – to open up my life to? i don’t think so.
at least in the “good old days” you knew when someone was joking. remember /sarcasm/?
(image via lamebook)