So I have reached a point where I need to connect with people on line but it turns out that many of them have abandoned the regular internet for facebook.....crap...
I have a product to sell. I've worked on it for years and I can never recoup my expenses but I'd like to get rid of what I do have and I want people to say "Oh! You want that thing? There's one guy to go to." Unfortunately that means connecting with other people and that's a problem for me.
Let's go back a ways. You know how people go out to eat now a days and instead of talking to the people at their table they are looking at their phones? That makes me sooooo happy. 30 years ago, I was the guy who went out in public with a sketchpad and instead of talking to people drew pics and wrote notes. I've always had problems with being gregarious. I've always preferred distractions to interactions. Fast forward to today.
Finally it's cool to be a nerd. You can be as geeky as you want and still get a date. You can be socially awkward and its OK to avoid interaction even at some hoity toity coffee shop but now the goody-two-shoes, self-improvement types want everyone to make socialization great again by pointing out that only weirdos and dweebs should put down their smart phones and interact with yet another generation of rando's we don't understand.
Hence my problem on social media. I got online in the mid 90's and rule #1 was don't tell anyone who you are. It was nirvana (the spiritual state, not the band). I could take as long as I needed to reply. No one asked for eye contact. If someone didn't understand your vocabulary they had to go look those words up. If they didn't know your literary or cinematic references it was on them to do the research. For a few brief years, we were kings. Now, we're the focus of hate filled stereotypes that can't be addressed without watching 16 hours per day of fox news or reading every liberal blog online. The parties hate each other. The generations hate each other. The religions hate each other. And when you speak openly, honestly online today you are lumped into one of those groups and attacked by the others.
I long for the days when it was all trolls and weirdos. Now I have to deal with you, your kids and your parents all on facebook and none of them seem to feel obligated to spend hours in a chat room talking to me to learn what I mean by last post.
OK. Enough venting. It's back to a world I don't understand, where everyone seems to judge or hate me after they use or abuse me, and where I cannot hope to find a pier group I can trust or relate to.
RIP : the internet : 1995-2005