I was talking recently with some folks online about the old internet. The general consensus was that we’ve lost something truly precious, somewhere in the midst of old blogs and Livejournal and those bits and pieces we’d wander through, un-aggregated and un-Facebooked*. A simpler time, it was agreed, when we expressed ourselves more openly and authentically. We weren’t widely read, or data mined; we weren’t gaining fame or monetizing. We didn’t have the incentives or risks that permeate our modern online existence.

And the internet wasn’t commercial. It was just a place for people to go, and learn, and connect. I listened to a Cory Doctorow podcast recently (“Who Broke The Internet“), in which we get to hear young Cory, 20 years ago, explain to listeners what the shiny new Internet is all about. The older Cory reminds us what we had, and talks us through how we lost it. I highly recommend both his blog (Pluralistic) and the podcast itself. The enshittification of the internet (and of commercial services more generally) is a recurring topic throughout his work.

I’m nostalgic by nature, and I acknowledge my rose-tinted lenses. I know that my Livejournal days**, for example, were fulfilling in part simply because I was in my 20s, and had an interconnected set of friends — focused on social relationships rather than work or family — who knew each other both in person and online. As someone more socially isolated (thanks, middle age!), of course I miss that environment. And the nostalgia is strong when I think of my teenage years, connecting to BBSes on a 1200 baud modem, playing door games and talking to people online for the very first time. But, again, it’s true that I get nostalgic about my teens in general too.

All of that said. I think there are a lot of people out there who don’t really want to be posting punchy, forgettable blurbs on post-twitter sites or watching engagement-boosting videos on Instagram. There were certainly plenty such kindred spirits in our conversation last week (on Threads, ironically). But it’s not clear how to get any of that back. It’s hard to put time and emotional investment into writing something thoughful that’s likely to be swallowed by The Algorithm and never seen again. And of course video has supplanted both text and photos on many of these sites, often for terrible reasons.

Part of my angst about online spaces, I guess, comes from my desire for un-optimized experiences. Life with the quirks and hurdles that get eroded over time by a desire for efficiency and profit but also simply by the distributed problem-solving power of the well-connected world over time. It’s more than just nostalgia; technology and the internet have taken something from us by defining the best route to whatever we want to do, and discarding variation.

Part of what I like about fantasy worlds is this: there’s so much that hasn’t been done, hasn’t been explored, hasn’t been refined to the point of optimal resource extraction. The ruins haven’t been found and claimed and priced to the perfect point for visitors. There’s no well-maintained road to that strange land across the mountains, and no easily accessible translation or documentation of the local language and culture. Life and experience haven’t been mapped and commodified.

You may have read the Vonnegut quote that’s been going around recently, from A Man Without a Country. Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope —

Oh, she says well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope.

I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know…

And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore.

I don’t have a tidy conclusion or a list of action items with which to end this post. These are things that weigh on me. I meander through my thoughts on them. I don’t know what to do, and I have more questions than answers. An untidy, unfinished, evolving story; maybe that’s the right place to be, after all.

* Though actually the early days of Facebook were pretty good.
** I just got an email from Livejournal congratulating me on my 21 year LJ anniversary. My Livejournal account is of legal drinking age.
*** I can’t believe I grew up as the tech kid in a borderline luddite household and now I’m railing against technology. I guess we really do turn into our parents.