Early morning and a wave of nostalgia hits.
America Online. AOL.
The good old days 😝
Seriously.
A/S/L?
Back then, we hardly had no brands to promote. We had time and energy to care and few enough choices that we knew where we wanted to be.
It feels as if the internet has split in two, the realm of the masses where only pleasing the algoirhtm and pulling eyeballs matters, and the realm of tiny clubs, stagnant pools with no fresh faces, other than those who pop their head in to see what’s up.
We have all become numb to the tendancy of others to have some kind of game they are playing. They seeking followers or viewers, or trying to hack you, or killing time but without any interest in others.
Perhaps it’s also because I’ve gone international. Back then I stuck to communities which were more local, it was easier to meet.
That’s not to say the relationships I’ve made here don’t matter. They matter a lot. I stuck around at Hive for this long because it reminds me of the good old days. But there is a sense of lethargic indifference that I feel in myself as much as I feel it in the people around me.
It’s all too much.
I long for simpler times but I wouldn’t put the cat back into the box if I could. I like that things are monetized now and that artists can self produce and that the southern hemisphere is just as connected as the northern hemisphere.
It just feels harder to move people.
I started a discord chat about 6 years ago with the hopes pf making it an online cafe for Hive bloggers who eanted to build a deeper connection without the thought of upvotes, to connect over a desire for connection. I wanted us to grow out of consensus and a pursuit of pur shared ideals.
It was great for what it was. A place for a few of us to get closer. A few people stuck around for a while but I tried to keep the doors open to new people and get enough momentum that it could survive even if most of the core 5 or 6 of us disappeared. I was hoping for it to become bigger than me, something that could be passed on to a new generation or evolve into something new.
But like most discord channels, it peaked quickly and the life slowly drying up with little droplets always present. Now it’s been over a year since there was any activity in there and I don’t have the time or energy to promise to keep it alive anymore.
Most of us have moved on.
And I guess that’s how the internet has always been. But I hope that in the future we can create more non-hierarchical communities, where it’s not all around one influencer or youtube channel, where personal gain can be left at the door and people still care.
I hope young people are finding lifelong friends from across the world and finding new interests and passions through the people they interact with online. I hope they don’t only let the algorithms dictate what they see but curate the direction they take and have an active role in the process of their own evolution.
I’m not sure what the point of saying all this was, I don’t think I have it in me to try ans rebuild the vibe of those times, but I hope we can all stay sincere and continue to care about each other just because it feels good even, even if caring becomes monetized and put attention becomes spread even thinner
Latest experiment:
If Kyoto wasn’t Kyoto…. - Home recordings
https://youtu.be/aGPWuyhHurw
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