Why online
Mar. 29th, 2022 01:14 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI have been thinking about how and why people use computers, livejournal, dreamwidth.
There was a short story I read from ages before the internet was a Thing that was about a student learning computers, and one of the assignments was to go through old old data and sort it. Don't remember where the story was or many details or I'd reference it better. But. The student saw that in the early days of computing it was all numbers, accounts, business, science, practical stuff you'd need a computer to get done.
Then humans started being human with computers.
And eventually it was all kinds of EVERYthing in there, like recordings of your partner to prove they snore that turned out to get used every night they were away.
So I was thinking, the internet very swiftly has been for all kinds of EVERYthing
but
lately I have been seeing less of it.
And 'lately' has lasted longer than I think. I have to add two years to any time math I do since my internal calendar froze when many people's did. But before that I seem to have spent pretty much all the time since college with it all just whooshing past as I figure I'll figure things out Real Soon Now.
So.
I've been in fandom on the internet since the late 1990s. Probably 1997? Not sure.
I remember mailing lists. It felt like I got All The Email, but looking back it's probable the fic didnt happen as fast as an Ao3 feed. And we discussed episodes, but it was far harder to get at them synchronously in different countries. I was years behind quite often. Still chatted about it though. And off topic posts had to be clearly labelled, if they happened at all.
I had a geocities site, but pages seemed like a more permanent thing then, so little got written. Things I'd throw together as a rambly post or a quick meta here were posted there without dates on, in a link tree I had to decide for myself, and it felt like saying something vaguely permanent. ... which obviously has not aged well, but. Websites were for archiving your fic on, not chatting about your day.
Then message boards. The Soulful Spike Society. Episode chat had its own threads, and the general chat thread whizzed by. I miss it. We filled up Parts pretty quick. We were often just saying hi and how was your day and so forth, because there was a Part for it. Made friends. But the board was show specific and when the shows finished it just... faded away. Took a while, but, not been any posts for quite a bit now.
Then livejournal, which AS livejournal didnt last as long as it feels. Lots of fandom, lots of activity, the ability to get nineteen people answering a quick post, and, a LOT of topic mixing. Because this is our own personal space.
... the 'this' I am typing into is dreamwidth, and has been for longer than it was ever LJ. Stopped xposting when the TOS changed, posts gone now, but everyone I knew had faded away long before, it was a desert of xposts.
Topic specific communities were a great way to have a Place for content, but the daily chat, which I dont think was just me, that was where Posting All Kinds Of Everything happened. Just your tasks and your life and your friend who says when they check on their cows and All Sorts.
That's the using computers just to live your life. That's being humans, on the internet. That's treating this screen full of type characters as a way to just chat with whoever might be around. Human connection.
And it feels ephemeral, because the reading page moves on, but it's all still out there.
Some friends who passed away have their whole journals still out there, including a last post about going into hospital, and one last sad comment there.
Others have a handful of posts that are still visible, the rest gone, maybe locked, who knows.
Most journals just kind of trail off. Hundreds of weeks since anyone posted. And then you don't know.
But I dont know if that kind of everyday chatter moved elsewhere. Or if it wasnt very common in the first place.
Or possibly was just me. Social norms and I do not get along. And the computer has always been almost the only place I get to chat, out loud words being difficult and social groups difficult to find at the best of times.
Tumblr is... well obviously tumblr is whatever you follow. Tumblr as I experience it is a lot a lot a lot of fandom gifs, and not much meta.
Also the fandom I followed people for is hardly ever the one they're in now.
Also it's still years between episodes existing and me seeing them, sometimes, though more because I dont watch much TV and catch up with DVD releases.
I feel less like there's an ongoing conversation to join in with.
I definitely would never chat about my day on tumblr. If the idea of a fandom meta post getting reblogged beyond my usual circles feels weird and squirmy, how much weirder if I'm just talking about my real life?
So maybe everyone feels like that, and doesn't post what they wouldnt want reblogged under someone else's name?
I dont know.
But I dont know where the chattery bits went.
Probably to a chat program in closer to real time, where time zones matter.
I don't know from twitter, I dont do facebook, I cant make sense of either and facebook crashed my computer.
I dont know where all else everyone is.
I feel like the day to day chat is less likely to be there though.
Because the internet is very visibly Big now. It doesnt feel so much like we've got a living room and a local and a coffee place and so forth, it feels more like... trying to maintain a social life in the middle of an eight lane highway.
Everything whooshes past so fast.
And anyone, out of billions of people, could grab at a bit and comment and show it around and get the opinions of billions of people landing on any given data from a height.
So we've got Ao3, and I am so glad for it, but it isnt the chattery place. And locked fics happen, and I think do not turn up on the feeds, so more is on there than I remember. But that's pretty much only the fic parts.
So I dont know if I need to find where fandom is at now, or, if, as I keep seeing in posts, the way we did fandom for that little while kind of went away.
Not loving that idea.
But the other peoblem is the not being fannish the way I used to. I can look back through my journal and see explosions of focused fannishness when a new thing grabs me. Buffy, Angel, Torchwood (and only then Doctor Who, since I initally was not keen on the new series, mostly for reasons of Change). Avengers fandom after the movie came out, fading after Civil War. Legends of Tomorrow and associated characters, though the tonal differences between shows left me most fond of a fairly focused subset.
That's kind of it, and that's... not recent.
Plus some other enthusiasms - most of them I think - seem to last as long as the box set does, and the impulse to be fannish about them never quite coalesces, because I just watch and move on.
I have been buying All The Things for Pathfinder first edition rpg, but, it doesnt feel like fandom, or at least not yet.
... also it is somewhat expected one *plays* a game, and I havent actually actively gone and played an RPG for fifteen years, so it wasnt Pathfinder then.
... also I dont think the kind of fic I just wrote and the kind of games its easiest to play would have much overlap.
... ah well.
So I dont know where the people went, and I dont know what I'd talk to them about when I found them.
Fragmented media landscape, very little that everyone watches at once, asynchronous watching by A Lot because people can just pick up any media from the last however many years, and yet, also, cannot find some media cause it just goes away.
Fragmented seems the word, now, for a lot.
But it seems like, when a big post was one interacted with by nineteen people, finding that many people again ought to be possible.
However did I ever find people?
And where did they go?
I dont think we use online quite the way we used to. Not just we here dreamwidth, we here humans. The way the computers are set up focuses attention for you, will you nil you, and I think we started going quiet in several ways, not being focused on.
But I also personally went quiet for ordinary reasons of doomscrolling, falling out of fandoms, and not really having new opinions.
... sometimes I disagree with earlier me, sometimes a show developed in directions that dumped me right out of it, but the baseline stuff about gender and sexuality and disability feels rather like having the same grumble for twenty five years, because whatever progress we make, there's still grumble to be had. And it hasnt got any more interesting to say it.
All the reasons I fell out with my degree topic, cultural studies, also get in the way of interacting with media texts.
Tricky.
So I take this thought for a wander for a whole bunch of minutes, and then at the end I get the impulse to friends lock it, because anxious.
I kind of miss posting multiple times a day and having a little chat going in the background.
Hello humans, we are human, let's be human!
Let friendship thrive.
I'm going to have to find new ways to try that.
There was a short story I read from ages before the internet was a Thing that was about a student learning computers, and one of the assignments was to go through old old data and sort it. Don't remember where the story was or many details or I'd reference it better. But. The student saw that in the early days of computing it was all numbers, accounts, business, science, practical stuff you'd need a computer to get done.
Then humans started being human with computers.
And eventually it was all kinds of EVERYthing in there, like recordings of your partner to prove they snore that turned out to get used every night they were away.
So I was thinking, the internet very swiftly has been for all kinds of EVERYthing
but
lately I have been seeing less of it.
And 'lately' has lasted longer than I think. I have to add two years to any time math I do since my internal calendar froze when many people's did. But before that I seem to have spent pretty much all the time since college with it all just whooshing past as I figure I'll figure things out Real Soon Now.
So.
I've been in fandom on the internet since the late 1990s. Probably 1997? Not sure.
I remember mailing lists. It felt like I got All The Email, but looking back it's probable the fic didnt happen as fast as an Ao3 feed. And we discussed episodes, but it was far harder to get at them synchronously in different countries. I was years behind quite often. Still chatted about it though. And off topic posts had to be clearly labelled, if they happened at all.
I had a geocities site, but pages seemed like a more permanent thing then, so little got written. Things I'd throw together as a rambly post or a quick meta here were posted there without dates on, in a link tree I had to decide for myself, and it felt like saying something vaguely permanent. ... which obviously has not aged well, but. Websites were for archiving your fic on, not chatting about your day.
Then message boards. The Soulful Spike Society. Episode chat had its own threads, and the general chat thread whizzed by. I miss it. We filled up Parts pretty quick. We were often just saying hi and how was your day and so forth, because there was a Part for it. Made friends. But the board was show specific and when the shows finished it just... faded away. Took a while, but, not been any posts for quite a bit now.
Then livejournal, which AS livejournal didnt last as long as it feels. Lots of fandom, lots of activity, the ability to get nineteen people answering a quick post, and, a LOT of topic mixing. Because this is our own personal space.
... the 'this' I am typing into is dreamwidth, and has been for longer than it was ever LJ. Stopped xposting when the TOS changed, posts gone now, but everyone I knew had faded away long before, it was a desert of xposts.
Topic specific communities were a great way to have a Place for content, but the daily chat, which I dont think was just me, that was where Posting All Kinds Of Everything happened. Just your tasks and your life and your friend who says when they check on their cows and All Sorts.
That's the using computers just to live your life. That's being humans, on the internet. That's treating this screen full of type characters as a way to just chat with whoever might be around. Human connection.
And it feels ephemeral, because the reading page moves on, but it's all still out there.
Some friends who passed away have their whole journals still out there, including a last post about going into hospital, and one last sad comment there.
Others have a handful of posts that are still visible, the rest gone, maybe locked, who knows.
Most journals just kind of trail off. Hundreds of weeks since anyone posted. And then you don't know.
But I dont know if that kind of everyday chatter moved elsewhere. Or if it wasnt very common in the first place.
Or possibly was just me. Social norms and I do not get along. And the computer has always been almost the only place I get to chat, out loud words being difficult and social groups difficult to find at the best of times.
Tumblr is... well obviously tumblr is whatever you follow. Tumblr as I experience it is a lot a lot a lot of fandom gifs, and not much meta.
Also the fandom I followed people for is hardly ever the one they're in now.
Also it's still years between episodes existing and me seeing them, sometimes, though more because I dont watch much TV and catch up with DVD releases.
I feel less like there's an ongoing conversation to join in with.
I definitely would never chat about my day on tumblr. If the idea of a fandom meta post getting reblogged beyond my usual circles feels weird and squirmy, how much weirder if I'm just talking about my real life?
So maybe everyone feels like that, and doesn't post what they wouldnt want reblogged under someone else's name?
I dont know.
But I dont know where the chattery bits went.
Probably to a chat program in closer to real time, where time zones matter.
I don't know from twitter, I dont do facebook, I cant make sense of either and facebook crashed my computer.
I dont know where all else everyone is.
I feel like the day to day chat is less likely to be there though.
Because the internet is very visibly Big now. It doesnt feel so much like we've got a living room and a local and a coffee place and so forth, it feels more like... trying to maintain a social life in the middle of an eight lane highway.
Everything whooshes past so fast.
And anyone, out of billions of people, could grab at a bit and comment and show it around and get the opinions of billions of people landing on any given data from a height.
So we've got Ao3, and I am so glad for it, but it isnt the chattery place. And locked fics happen, and I think do not turn up on the feeds, so more is on there than I remember. But that's pretty much only the fic parts.
So I dont know if I need to find where fandom is at now, or, if, as I keep seeing in posts, the way we did fandom for that little while kind of went away.
Not loving that idea.
But the other peoblem is the not being fannish the way I used to. I can look back through my journal and see explosions of focused fannishness when a new thing grabs me. Buffy, Angel, Torchwood (and only then Doctor Who, since I initally was not keen on the new series, mostly for reasons of Change). Avengers fandom after the movie came out, fading after Civil War. Legends of Tomorrow and associated characters, though the tonal differences between shows left me most fond of a fairly focused subset.
That's kind of it, and that's... not recent.
Plus some other enthusiasms - most of them I think - seem to last as long as the box set does, and the impulse to be fannish about them never quite coalesces, because I just watch and move on.
I have been buying All The Things for Pathfinder first edition rpg, but, it doesnt feel like fandom, or at least not yet.
... also it is somewhat expected one *plays* a game, and I havent actually actively gone and played an RPG for fifteen years, so it wasnt Pathfinder then.
... also I dont think the kind of fic I just wrote and the kind of games its easiest to play would have much overlap.
... ah well.
So I dont know where the people went, and I dont know what I'd talk to them about when I found them.
Fragmented media landscape, very little that everyone watches at once, asynchronous watching by A Lot because people can just pick up any media from the last however many years, and yet, also, cannot find some media cause it just goes away.
Fragmented seems the word, now, for a lot.
But it seems like, when a big post was one interacted with by nineteen people, finding that many people again ought to be possible.
However did I ever find people?
And where did they go?
I dont think we use online quite the way we used to. Not just we here dreamwidth, we here humans. The way the computers are set up focuses attention for you, will you nil you, and I think we started going quiet in several ways, not being focused on.
But I also personally went quiet for ordinary reasons of doomscrolling, falling out of fandoms, and not really having new opinions.
... sometimes I disagree with earlier me, sometimes a show developed in directions that dumped me right out of it, but the baseline stuff about gender and sexuality and disability feels rather like having the same grumble for twenty five years, because whatever progress we make, there's still grumble to be had. And it hasnt got any more interesting to say it.
All the reasons I fell out with my degree topic, cultural studies, also get in the way of interacting with media texts.
Tricky.
So I take this thought for a wander for a whole bunch of minutes, and then at the end I get the impulse to friends lock it, because anxious.
I kind of miss posting multiple times a day and having a little chat going in the background.
Hello humans, we are human, let's be human!
Let friendship thrive.
I'm going to have to find new ways to try that.
no subject
Date: 2022-03-29 10:32 am (UTC)Even far historical records, where we only see accounting ledgers and official documents reveal humans being human.
Then I had too many thoughts and overloaded, so can't reply more.
But by all means. Let's post and be human. It's certainly healthier than the doomscrolling. Makes me happy when we like or reblog from each other on tumblr stuff picked for joy making, for shared fandom love, for just being interesting.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-01 07:48 am (UTC)I also like tumblr like and reblogging, like waving and sharing shiny. 🖖⭐
no subject
Date: 2022-03-29 11:23 pm (UTC)I'm pretty sure this was an Anne McCaffrey story in the Brainship 'verse. Written before common personal computer use, never mind social media (I probably read it in the 1970s, maybe 80s).
~
no subject
Date: 2022-04-01 07:44 am (UTC)Web searches suggest it is Dull Drums?
I should go find it on the shelf and check...
yes, found it! Dull Drums it is!
... but I dont think I summarised it accurately. Re reading a bit of it, it was about people starting to trust computers, specifically that private data would stay private. Huh. Not same thing.
ah well.
no subject
Date: 2022-04-10 12:14 am (UTC)