Hey everyone I'm dropping in here.
I grew up on the later days of the old web. I remember the magical feeling of it being the digital wild west. Nerds sharing stories about particular interests with other nerds. Everything being barebones functional and looking extremely ugly, filled with annoying gifs and ugly colors. (Yet nowadays that aesthetic is pleasing somehow. Must be nostalgia.) Web pages taking forever to load. Flamewars. Less moderation. Personal webpages. Instant messengers. Anything went.
Then as we all know it has become this bland, uniform corporate dystopia. How boring, but I guess inevitable. Just the nature of things. Anyway, I'm here seeking a sort of refuge from the modern web. Done with all forms of social media, aside from forums and image boards. It's all too much, total information overload... I have no interest in taking a part in it anymore. Glad to see forums still exist. Guess they never went away, just took a backseat. I'm hoping for a forum reneissance to be honest.
I always loved the anonymity of forums. Nobody cares who you are in real life, you're not trying to get attention on your real life accomplishments, it's a completely separate thing. Focusing on discussions and discussions alone. I heard someone say that, "back in the day the internet was escapism from real life, nowadays real life is escapism from the internet." When you're using your real name and interact with other people using their real names, it becomes just like this... shittier version of real life, you know? A pale imitation that brings forth the worst qualities in us. But anonymous interaction, that's a totally different thing. There is no equivalent to it in the real world. That's what the digital wonderland felt to me growing up into it as a youngster: a whole new world. And now it has become, as I said, just another run-of-the-mill extension of the corporate dystopia. Doesn't that like tie into the whole vaporwave thing? Nobody knew quite where we were headed, teh interwebs was gonna change everything, we were thinking of unlimited possibilities!!! And here we are now. Guess everything is connected like that, and that's probably the reason I am here on this forum. Heh, I feel like rewatching that movie Hackers now.
On a lighter note regarding my interests: I like tinkering with old hardware that others would consider obsolete, using it till the day it breaks or it becomes truly obsolete to the point of not serving any useful purpose anymore. For example, the core components of my desktop PC are proudly 11 years old at this point. I've built my own, mixing and match it along the years. On that note I adore the sound and the visual representation of defragging a hard drive. (anyone else? anyone..?) The older the better cause they make louder sounds, There's nothing quite like listening to the sound of a hard drive and computer fans humming in the night, sitting in the glow of your monitor reading about conspiracy theories about the matrix on some archived web 1.0 geocities page. The only things I'm missing are a CRT monitor (RIP my old one) and a vinyl/cassette player to vibe to. Oh well, life goals for another day.
Hmm... Other than that I enjoy walking/cycling/swimming (particularly in nature), creating digital music, playing old single player PC games, spirituality/meditation/fasting etc.
That's it for now. Hello world.
All I want is to find real people to talk to. And as for fun, I don't have any. My entire life is spent in pursuit of knowledge, and of philosophy. It is completely unfulfilling, thankless, and it somehow takes me further from the light everyday.
, in my internet-wide search to find somewhere that i could feel comfortable on, and somewhere that scratched that chronically online itch in my brain
