"Lurking: How a Person Became a User"

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s0ren

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In a used bookstore a few weekends ago I picked up Lurking: How a Person Became a User by Joanne McNeil. The book purports to be "a concise but wide-ranging personal history of the internet." It's not bad, but neither is it particularly compelling. There's certainly some interesting stuff in here, one example is a bit about the origin of terms like "cyberspace" as well as some interesting early internet services like Echo (East Coast Hang Out), which was basically a supped up NYC BBS. Some interesting stories about Echo were featured and I'm definitely gonna try to read the book about it, Cyberville, when I get the chance. I'm not done the book yet but figured some travelers would be interested in some of its more compelling parts so I thought I'd cobble them together here in a thread and spare you from having read to a book that was clearly written for millennials who feel superior than their peers because they have copies of Zizek books -- which they have never read -- on their shelves.

"People used to talk about the internet as a place. The information superhighway. A frontier. The internet was something to get on. Even the desktop metaphor was in turn clarifying, then confusing: it helped people understand how a personal computer organizes information, while it invited a user to think of the experience as three-dimensional and spatial. Now people talk about the internet as something to talk to; it is a someone. Even casually, people discuss the internet -- insentient, dumb -- as living, real. A friend or a foe. Something with eyes... Headlines like "What the Internet Thinks of this Week's Blockbuster Movie" or "The Internet Loves Alpacas" discuss collective reactions on social media platforms as if they were the opinions of an individual person... This metaphor reveals how emotionally present and invested people feel when they use the internet. A familiar but mysterious companion, the internet is seductive, idiosyncratic, unreliable, and contradictory, while it is also at your service and by your side. But when anthropomorphized, diverse and divergent communities of users are reduced to a single identity." pg17-18.
While I think McNeil's analysis about people referring to the internet as a singular identity is wrong, just as when we refer to "The French" or "The Chinese" people are not thinking about a singular identity in the way she uses the term, I do think she is right to identify a shift in the internet no longer feeling like a "place" for most people.

"When William Gibson came up with 'cyberspace,' as a word and concept for the virtual worlds in his fiction, he wasn't just thinking about the destination through the screen, but the surface where a user's feet touched the ground. The idea came to him as he watched kids in an arcade, "so physically involved," he told The Paris Review, that it seemed that "what they wanted was to be inside the games, within the notional space of the machine." Every time I read that Gibson quote, I am transported back to the physical space that was obliterated when I entered cyberspace: the white walls, the tan carpet under my feet, and the cumbersome beige box of a personal computer in front of me. The keys, a sierra of peaks and slopes, felt heavy and pressurized at every click; nothing like the uniform flat buttons I'm tapping as I write this. I shared that computer with the rest of my family. That is where I grew up: immobile and hunched over while resplendent in release, my feet there and my head elsewhere." pg 40.
I think these two ideas together really resonate for me and the many days I spent endlessly shitposting on old forums like Gamefaqs. It wasn't like I was there in my family room on the computer, I was in another place altogether. While the idea of the internet as another place lives on, both in the notion of the metaverse :SoyU1: and those who can still experience this metaphysical digital bliss or the fleeting moments I still have of it, McNeil is right that the majority of users no longer see the internet this way. Rather, for most people the internet is a bundle of very limited websites where one mostly engages with people you already know (IG, FB, etc.) or engage in incredibly bad faith ways (Twitter, where people just want to dunk on others who have different political opinions). I think the loss of thinking about the internet as a place, both in the sense of that digital bliss but also the necessity of taking on a certain behavior while you are in a foreign space, is part of the downfall of the internet.

I don't really have any super robust thoughts on this yet but curious what other people think. Have we lost that magic of ascending into cyperspace where we are in another world and if we have, does this have any serious effect on the conduct of good internet citizenship?
 
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mydadiscar

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Lurking is for pussies join blindfolded and start making conversations about sandwiches, that's how you show dominance and you win some friends along the way,
I have never lurked in my LIFE. I just stumble in and start yapping.
 
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s0ren

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Lurking is for pussies join blindfolded and start making conversations about sandwiches, that's how you show dominance and you win some friends along the way,
I'm inclined to agree but that's not really what the book, nor anything in the OP, is about. I'm pretty sure she/the publisher just called the book that to use a slightly-less-than-normie internet phrase.
 
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I'm inclined to agree but that's not really what the book, nor anything in the OP, is about. I'm pretty sure she/the publisher just called the book that to use a slightly-less-than-normie internet phrase.
Oh i didn't read what the op said, i just wanted to post random shit.
 
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mydadiscar

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man's pfp said "peace" and he advocates domination
989.jpg

It says peace walker, the name of the metal gear and the game itself, which is made out to denote irony, so yeah, I'm a pacifist who wants domination. (you really should play metal gear thermite, because you always look like a dumbass with that pretentious attitude) :bullymaguirelaugh:
 
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(you really should play metal gear thermite, because you always look like a dumbass with that pretentious attitude)
Damn dude wasn't peace walker about nuclear deterrence? You just vaporized that man. (I mean that he was being too harsh on you, @Thermite)
 
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Damn dude wasn't peace walker about nuclear deterrence? You just vaporized that man. (I mean that he was being too harsh on you, @Thermite)
That was V, but yeah, tbh i didn't actually meant what i said, i just like to bully thermite for fun really, he is a holmes from the agora after all.
 
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That was V, but yeah, tbh i didn't actually meant what i said, i just like to bully thermite for fun really, he is a holmes from the agora after all.
I understando
 
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It wasn't like I was there in my family room on the computer, I was in another place altogether. While the idea of the internet as another place lives on, both in the notion of the metaverse :SoyU1: and those who can still experience this metaphysical digital bliss or the fleeting moments I still have of it, McNeil is right that the majority of users no longer see the internet this way. Rather, for most people the internet is a bundle of very limited websites
I talk a bit about it in a Serial Experiments Lain analysis/documentary I did a while back, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that the internet has in a sense become an overlay over reality itself. Due in large part to the smartphone, we now basically have ubiquitous access to the internet at all times. It is no long a distinct psychological space, but one that is always in the air so to speak (but also literally).

Even though smart phones were already pretty universal at that point, I didn't get my first one until 2015 when I started college. Through out high school, if I wanted to access virtual space (not just the internet, but games, downloaded anime, etc) I had to wait until I got home. To a certain limited capacity I could also use school computers, but really it was just my laptop back at home where I engaged with virtual space. There was a distinct psychological distinction between lived everyday reality, and anything virtual, since there was a hard border separating them.

Now with a phone in my pocket everywhere I go, I can literally access the internet at all times. The border has been shattered, and in turn the sensation of virtual spaces feeling like their own distinct spaces has also disappeared. Add on to this that the internet has essentially shrunk (with a handful of megacities like FB, Twitter, Google dominating traffic), it no longer even feels like a space to explore but rather a streamlined service like turning on the TV and tuning into one of a dozen or so channels.
 
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While going for a walk after posting this thread, I thought about a new angle to approach the phenomenon of connecting to virtual spaces as though you are entering a real place. This is a feeling that people are also probably familiar with, what psychologists have coined as a "flow" state or what you might call 'being in the zone.' From Wikipedia:
In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process of the activity. In essence, flow is characterized by the complete absorption in what one does, and a resulting transformation in one's sense of time.
The creatives on the site are definitely very familiar with this feeling; when you are fully immersed in the creation of your art and suddenly hours or even days pass as though it flew by. Just as the barriers between you and whatever you are interacting with -- whether it is the book you're reading, the paper + pencil you're writing with, the DAW you are using -- fade away while in your flow. When the internet becomes a place you are taken away to, it is because you are fully immersed in the idea of the internet and are truly taken somewhere else mentally. I think this aligns with what I say below in response to L@in about the quality of certain websites and how people engage with them as well as the barrier of smartphones he notes to entering this state.


I talk a bit about it in a Serial Experiments Lain analysis/documentary I did a while back, but I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that the internet has in a sense become an overlay over reality itself. Due in large part to the smartphone, we now basically have ubiquitous access to the internet at all times. It is no long a distinct psychological space, but one that is always in the air so to speak (but also literally).

Even though smart phones were already pretty universal at that point, I didn't get my first one until 2015 when I started college. Through out high school, if I wanted to access virtual space (not just the internet, but games, downloaded anime, etc) I had to wait until I got home. To a certain limited capacity I could also use school computers, but really it was just my laptop back at home where I engaged with virtual space. There was a distinct psychological distinction between lived everyday reality, and anything virtual, since there was a hard border separating them.

Now with a phone in my pocket everywhere I go, I can literally access the internet at all times. The border has been shattered, and in turn the sensation of virtual spaces feeling like their own distinct spaces has also disappeared. Add on to this that the internet has essentially shrunk (with a handful of megacities like FB, Twitter, Google dominating traffic), it no longer even feels like a space to explore but rather a streamlined service like turning on the TV and tuning into one of a dozen or so channels.
Yeah, as I said in the OP I think the limited space of the internet, and not just a limited digital geography but the type of sites that they are, plays a big part. In my view, the nature of the websites probably plays a bigger role though. I think the same feeling of virtual integration -- I know this is an awkward phrase but still trying to find a phrasing I like to describe this phenomenon -- occurs to a lot of people with video games. You are not simply playing the game, the device you are using to interact with the virtual world fades into the background and you enter the game as a 'place'. For most people, this only happens with very specific games that they can successfully integrate with. But I doubt anyone ever experiences this with shallow exploitative games that are too connected to the outside world around you, such as reminding you that you are playing a game by bombarding you with microtransactions, the video game equivalent to FB et al.

The smartphone angle I didn't think about but you're right that this is the norm now. I know lots of normies who basically never use a computer anymore, their only access is their phone (which in turn feeds into the limited cyberspaces they traverse). I'm sure there are people who can successfully integrate their sensory experiences with a smart phone, but for most they remain too connected to the outside world to flow.

Will definitely check out your Lain analysis when I get the chance btw!
 
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that's not really what the book, nor anything in the OP, is about
I'll put the book at the first place of my backlog. At least we'd be on the same page
 
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I'm not done the book yet but figured some travelers would be interested in some of its more compelling parts so I thought I'd cobble them together here in a thread and spare you from having read to a book that was clearly written for millennials who feel superior than their peers because they have copies of Zizek books -- which they have never read -- on their shelves.
There's a lot of stuff out there that fits this description, it's hard to separate the wheat from the chaff if you're interested in the subject. Putting together an internet reading list might be a fun Agora group project.
As for your question, I think that the idea of "cyberspace" as a realm completely different from reality is dead and gone outside of a few fringe groups. The author is absolutely correct when she refers to the depersonalizing effect "microblog" sites like Twitter and Tumblr have on the internet. The format encourages users to appropriate posts made by other people they agree with as part of the constant stream of text and images that's supposed to define their online identity, resulting in large groups of people whose only sense of community comes from posting/saying/thinking the exact same thing as their online friends. Microblog sites are the only forms of social media that still put any emphasis on interacting with strangers, and they're set up to ensure those interactions are as devoid of individuality as possible, both in form and in content. Smartphones killed the illusion of physically going somewhere different, and social media did the same to the concept of there being anywhere different to go. For most people the internet represents a small group of real-life friends surrounded by a faceless mob of voices that periodically switch from one group-personality to the next. Interacting with a true community of strangers is no longer possible unless you're willing to go off the beaten path.
 
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