Yet another trip down memory lane…

I take a lot of these, I am sure you noticed. Being semi-bed bound really will do that to you. In the quiet moments between whatever you busy yourself you tend to wander the cobweb lined corridors of your mind. Tonight is no different for me. In the process of trying to get mIRC to cooperate so I can enjoy omg.lol's IRC server in a client I enjoy, it made me realize. I have been using mIRC since 2003. 22 years.

Cripes, I am indeed getting old. I was in 8th grade. My best friend in middle school Courtney introduced me to it. I vaguely remember the server he brought me into was irc.serenity.net. It was mainly for a LOTR and if I am not mistaken Final Fantasy Role Playing channel. But there was also a Paranormal channel and some other niche areas. It was fun. Till I ran afoul of one of the server mods. I was young. Argumentative, and an all around little shit so the eventual ban hammer was partially justified.

Not just IRC

When I joined IRC back in 2003 I also discovered forums. The big forum provider then was proboards. It was super easy to set up, you didn't have to do anything more than choose your name and where your forum would live. I still to this day have my proboard I set up with Courtney. I will forever be grateful to him as he showed me many many cool things about the internet. I have to admit I don't look at my proboard often as it is cringe inducing. But it still holds a place in my heart. While giants in the internet world have come and gone, IRC chat still lives on. Proboards still lives on. I yearn for that era of the internet again. When everyone had a website, a blog, a little niche weird corner of the internet all their own. When things weren't so bastardized by consumerism and everyone trying to make a buck of content.

Just authentic missives fired off into the wild wild west. Not everything had to be profound or written with an angle. It was often just people writing about their day or firing off a shower thought. Or telling a story from their childhood or whatever. Sometimes it was writing a short story, like we used to do on Writing.com (which is still alive and kicking after all these years as well) or fan fiction about whatever franchise they were hella into at the time. Sure some ads appeared on some of the sites, but people weren't pushing some product at you and masking it in a post like you see so much today.

We are worse off today…

Everything now is algorithms and designed behind closed doors to mine you for your data and your habits and it just feels hella predatory to me. So a few years back when I stumbled across omg.lol and the whole concept of the indieweb, I was sold. The kinds of things I was seeing and reading, not only from Adam, was heartening. People, I believe, are yearning for a return to what I consider the Internets' heyday. A simpler more personal internet. A place where rage isn't manufactured and pushed out to keep folks in a constant state of irritation, but instead where positivity and community reign supreme. Not a toxic positivity, but a place where on those days when you are feeling low, you can toot out a message saying well today was less than stellar, here is why and people in the community can reply with support, letting you know that people do exist out here in the ether that care about our fellow human beings.