After falling off the internet pretty spectacularly in recent weeks, I started looking at the likes of Threads, BlueSky, and the smouldering wreckage that Twitter has become.
While Threads is undeniably vital, and noisy, and exciting, and feels like it should be full of opportunity and adventure, it also feels like walking into a party you’ve not been invited to - arriving as a “plus one”. I could feel the stress rising as I tried to catch a little of the cacophonous chatter surrounding me.
I scrolled for some time - stopping to read this, liking that, and following here and there. As I read post after post, the cogs of the internet machinery deciphered me - funnelling my interests, biases and prejudices.
I posted a few words - remarking that I missed the way the world had once been - the way the internet had once been. An old friend replied the next morning. I met her while taking part in “National Blog Posting Month” back in 2006. Why do I remember it so clearly? I’m not sure.
We scattered on the wind over the years.
Lisa had a car crash in the early hours one morning in 2010. Her son survived the crash, and I look him up from time to time - to see how he’s doing. I’ve never forgotten her - she was a wonderful writer.
Victoria (not her real name) is still writing. I think she and I are the last - the last still writing. the last still tilting at the internet’s windmills.
Now and again the social internet works it’s magic - whittling the forest until I cross paths with long forgotten far-flung friends, and we catch up - telling stories of lives lived - of births, deaths, marriages, funerals, and everything in-between.
I miss the place we first met. A vast, tangled, and largely disconnected web of personal journals that stretched out in all directions, filled with seemingly unlimited possiblities. Blogrolls and guestbooks delivered you to the most interesting people you had never met. Comments filled address books with the most unlikely friendships.
Somewhere along the way platforms emerged - deciding what we should see, who we should discover, what we should say, and how we should say it. They built walled gardens so large most people didn’t realised they were in them.
I’m not sure I really have a point at the end of this vent (sorry).
Maybe that’s the point though. You don’t have to have a point. It’s fine to share what’s on your mind - to “exhale”.