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[littlefallsmets]

Yeah. I identify with this line of thought.

I remember when it was an essential part of the human experience to lose touch with all but your closest friends from every phase of your life.

Now everyone who ever knew you even slightly is your friend on like three or four different platforms and knows all your deepest and most random thoughts all the time.

It as if our ability to evolve over our lives has been erased to the point of erasing even the memory of the ability to evolve.

Everything we have ever been lingers in electronic amber all the fuck at once.

All is remembered, nothing forgiven. Paper trails of your every followed fad and failure like the chains of Jacob Marley, trailing us forever and ever amen.

I mean, I remember the Golden Age of The Internet too, when the early adopters amoungst those who did not actually know how to field-strip and programme, the first people whom internet-literacy and computer-literacy were not synonymous were all crawling out from under rocks and getting to know all kinds of people from all over the world like a bunch of jolly pirates with jolly-pirate nicknames and everything was fresh and new.

It was pretty fuck*ng amazing for a little while there.

[lprkn]

I wonder if the Golden Age of the Internet and the Golden Age of Ham Radio were similar.

[littlefallsmets]

I don't know, though, I think I may have squandered that internet age of wonder myself.

Fell in with a community of people committed to meeting up at conventions to have lonely-people sex in hotel rooms and/or create the illusion of friendship with the moderately famous... and all the fucked-up psychodrama that spins out of people chasing those ghosts. Tin-hat junior-high gossip tornadoes. Dime-store Machiavellis, a handful to a nickel. Munchausen by proxy-server real folk blues. Wheels within fifth wheels. Madness in every direction.

Basically, there's only two internet message boards I'm still an even remotely regular part of... here and a Mets message board where I am sort of the token messenger of rational pessimism.

Take this as great compliment, guys and girls, I love you tangental agendaless rogue motherfuckers.

I adore this little vestigular corner of the internet world, random imaginary people talking about whatever in a mostly intelligent manner.

You. Are. Rad.

EDIT: CB Radio too, from my father's tell of it.

[Toaster]

One of the many reasons I like this place is that it is not too big, or too small.

[lprkn]

Hmmm, I think I prefer its positioning between "hard" and "soft."

[miles]

All is remembered, nothing forgiven. Paper trails of your every followed fad and failure like the chains of Jacob Marley, trailing us forever and ever amen.

This guy posted on my wall the other day something like "I should have been nicer to you in junior high." Thing is, I can't even remember who the fuck he is. I guess if he was really a dick this is like the ultimate fuck you. I don't even remember the asshole! I know for some people Facebook can bring back some bad memories. It can't even do that for me.

[theinevitable]

I remember when it was an essential part of the human experience to lose touch with all but your closest friends from every phase of your life.

Based on my understanding of human history this was like 20 or 30 years out of the last million.

Maybe I can have a catchphrase that is like "bein' a dick about knowledge"

[littlefallsmets]

Okay. Point?

However:

I was promised, by my culture, the ability to run away from my actions and my communities over and over and over again until I got things right and I got to stay there, where everyone thought I was smart and awesome and flawless until the day I died. The concept of America definitely signed a document promising this when I was born. I am definitely sure of this. Notaries were present.

And now my culture pulls a total dick move and people who remember me from when I was eight and didn't eat vegetables for two months after seeing that Gilligans Island where they were almost poisoned by radioactive vegetables can totally know everything about me as I push dangerously close to thirty.

Dick move, culture, dick move.

[wombat]

Don't be such a pessimist.  You can do both, you know.

Yes, but I'm afraid most people aren't.

As for LFM's point I guess I always believed that everything you did was part of your Permanent Record. Although I guess to some extent I have done what you describe. You can always refuse those friend requests and ignore emails, anyway. That's not the problem. You know the real problem is that you bring yourself with you every time, right?

[AugustWest]

Yes, but I'm afraid most people aren't.

But we ARE, which is all that matters.  There'll be a community here for as long as we want there to be.  All we have to do is keep coming.

[dejavroom]

Everything we have ever been lingers in electronic amber all the fuck at once.

Registration still optional.

[littlefallsmets]

Registration is definitely still optional, with the caveat that you get to have every person you ever knew think you're a dick on the internet for ignoring them and thinking you're better than them, every time the next fad social networking platform comes along, every year or three.

I dunno.

And, yeah, I know that is not what America promised but... it's the way I feel like the only way I could get myself out of this rut, if it worked like that.

So pretending that it was promised as such made me feel better at the literal and figurative 2 AM of the soul.

"So yeah."

[dejavroom]

with the caveat that you get to have every person you ever knew think you're a dick on the internet for ignoring them and thinking you're better than them

Color me old, but sometimes this is a Good Thing. Also dude, didn't you hear, they've been successfully fighting 2 AMs of the soul for years already with vodka.

[theinevitable]

so, I really want to post these Avett Brothers lyrics, but when they are not sung in a simple voice with pleasing guitar in the background they sound... not as nice.

But I like:

Disappear from your hometown
Go and find the people that you know
Show them all your good parts
Leave town when the bad ones start to show

...

The weight of lies will bring you down
And follow you to every town
Cause nothin happens here
That doesn’t happen there
So when you run make sure you run
To something and not away from
Cause lies don’t need an aero-plane
To chase you anywhere

[littlefallsmets]

Not to get too too downer but...

I mean, my brother was a border-line alcoholic before his seizure disorder kicked up and, like...

Alcohol reacts horribly with his seizure medication so we do not keep alcohol in the house so that he will not be tempted.