v54 entry 1
shy of six months. dates passed, topics came and went, some missed their shot, 40k new members. change never changes. honest to God August to December feels much longer than January to June. I had an idea of what December would be, but this June is wholly unrecognizable; I guess I've been here before. let's get to it.
when we were young, this was all new to us. not much in our heads but great gusts to our backs, all hubris excused. computers, the Internet, and the culture at the time. radio, tv, and whatever our parents & teachers let slip didn't compare, or prepare. it started off simply enough; naïve clicks, reading without understanding, viewing without knowing. you'd really think there was no reason for it to be any different from the milieu of content we waded through already, our perpetually stimulated and thus senseless generation, if it weren't for the fact that this place actually reacted. coming to the internet, there was something new every time, which would be interesting enough alone, but what's more, it became familiar without being repetitive; it was alive. plenty of it was just us emulating and latching on to what was there, what older folks were doing, but with time, the mix became a little more even, our input actually having an effect, a firsthand experience in democracy. and, after not too long, there were pieces of us to be found. it's a frightful thing but all those hours weren't meaningless. we lived in these spaces and meant something, participating in ways children seldom get to. kids make art, kids can be seen, but it's always qualified, less than. for us, it just was. the internet's the internet, users users. no distinctions. and, what might be unique, is that to varying degrees per person, all that happened remained. it's all still there, our young years etched into the great formless relief and our ghosts still milling about. even if the forums aren't active anymore, there's still a kind of presence to them, always available to whomever happens by, be it digital anthropologists, new youngsters, or carrion feeders like myself. it's a gift, something you can always go back to, learn from, celebrate, emulate, and if you really need to, relive.
it's cursed, too. when we were young, we looked into those screens and saw the moment as it was and who we could be, something to run after; it was bustling, with paths not yet taken to places unknown. this really was a new world, one that we could explore with license and presumably without exploitation. we tread those trails, leaving marks along the way and ultimately creating new ones, digital natives without being born there, self-guided naturalization. later, though, new services arisen and the physical world progressing as it does, the screens spit back an image of who we were, years of input processed into a writhing and stretched fabric of personality, gnawed on and digested, but undeniably accurate. it's more than a reflection, because we don't have to bear ourselves before anything; it's just there, always has been, always will be. and, let me tell you, it's hard to overcome it. because, while it isn't real, it isn't alive, it certainly isn't dead. new pieces always popping up that make new connections, telling the future while you're living it, not letting you go. and damn it if it isn't fascinating. how many hours you can spend tracing all the ways you wrote yourself, walking the roads that lead to now in dreadful detail. struggling to let go, afraid of never regaining what you once were, what you could do. inspiration is interaction. life is lived, nothing less. that's why things don't spark like they used to, you can't carry on your flame with wood that's already been burnt. you need something new, and yet, this place, this life, is as suffocating now as it was liberating then, in no small part because of our own actions. it's time for the next step, whether you go along or not.
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