Slowing Down

I ended up stuck on twitter, which with my current settings only shows me new posts when they're posted and I scroll up to the top of the feed, so I can actually run out of posts to read.

On here is something different; there's so much to find, so many discussions to join, but you have to actually browse the site and seek them out, meeting new people and joining new groups and reading through the bulletin boards.

When web2.0 was released in the mid-2000s and there was a huge culture shift to the immediate rather than the e-mail, from instant messages to private messages because all messaging was instant, we lost something.

I was a slow start when it came to the new social media sites; I didn't really get addicted to Facebook until years after Farmville was taken down; but I still eventually became a convert. At first, I was horrified at the demise of the modern (at the time) internet, and just knew that this web2.0 thing would kill the parts of the web I loved.

That didn't happen right away, and I got less scared as the "everything lasts forever on the internet" mentality surrounding embarassing pictures or posts became a prevailing thought. And I extended that thought to the net I'd had my whole teen life, albinoblacksheep, rotten, encyclopaedia dramatica, newgrounds, myspace, neopets, the doll palace, AIM, YIM, mIRC, and I slowly came to terms with their immortality. Then askjeeves was taken down. I realized just how much of my childhood online had faded while I wasn't looking.

The reality that I'd been right crashed around me.

I've been pretty depressed since then. I have memory issues, and seeing the world forget the things I really don't want to disappear from my head is painful.

But somewhere out there, there are people building these sites back up again. The sites that require our attention to experience. The sites that let us slow down, stop doomscrolling, read a few blogs or some random person's musings, tinker with code. Live and interact with the internet in a more meaningful way again. They allow us to be mindful of our actions online, to choose what we want to say and who we want to say it to.

The internet had become, for me, a vessel through which the communications of my thoughts and interactions were carried. I'd lost touch with the joy of the internet itself. It's not a phone line. A website isn't just a form to get a point across to someone else. It's a playground in itself and it's the playground I spent my whole life exploring.

Some people walk through a park to get to work. Other people walk through the same park to look at the park itself. The internet is our park and we need to stop ignoring it to do more of the shit we already do outside of it. There is a beautiful world in here. It's not just a telephone, no matter how we're accessing it.

Stop and smell the roses.