Saturday, February 05, 2005

A Decade of Virtual Change

What has the internet become? It's scary and sad sometimes to see how the rules of netiquette have changed. I first powered up my modem in early 1995 and logged into Prodigy. At the time I was researching my family tree and they had these amazing forums where people could exchange information. I was amazed at the power of asking a question, and then receiving a dozen answers almost instantaneously. Wow - this is so cool! It was so much fun poking around the Prodigy site and finding so much information on anything and everything.

One day I wandered into a chatroom and I was mesmerized. This was a whole new world. Do you remember when you got your first "What are you wearing?" line. hehehe..... It didn't take me long to figure out that this wasn't going to be a conversation about fashion. I admit being shocked and it felt creepy. I quickly hit the exit key and vamoose..... ewwwwww. Are these guys sick or something? But I went back and learned that there was an 'ignore' key. That helped. I studied the conversations. Didn't take me long to learn the acronymese - LOL BRB LMAO OMG and all that stuff. It was a long time before I decided to dive in and try it. And I became addicted almost immediately. Why? What was it that drew us in? In my case, we had recently moved to Florida from the northeast and I admit that I was lonely for my old friends. I was stuck at home with two kids under the age of 7 and I didn't have a life of my own. Looking back on it now, it probably wasn't the most healthy choice because it allowed me to avoid real life in so many ways.

Things were so innocent in the early days though, weren't they? Sure, there were some real idiots out there, but overall the atmosphere was one of a party, day after day. When I went over to cserve it was even better because it became an 'international' party! That's what sold me on cserve over prodigy. Prodigy was just in the US, but cserve was all over the world. That was awesome.

I can honestly say that I did make some great friends - real friends. And it was so comforting to me that when we moved from Florida to Texas, my friends were still there. Geography had no bearing on the conversations or intrigues or any of it. Email was simple - spam didn't exist yet. I felt like I was part of a secret society because none of the people I knew in the 'real world' had email addresses nor did they understand why there would even be a need for one! When I left cserve because it was way too expensive (we paid by the hour then), there was a steep learning curve to navigatign the 'real' internet. We moved to the IRCs, which at first was very intimidating. That was when some of the 'badness' began to creep in. We tried to keep the group together, but by the late 90s it had already started to unravel. There were times that it got downright ugly. That was when I drifted away and so did most others.

Today, when I do venture into a dicussion group, forum, blog, message board or any of the hundreds of communication vistas on the net, it just seems that there is so much ugliness out there. I guess that I'm visiting the wrong places, but have only rarely found a place where I would even consider joining a discussion. Come to think of it, maybe twice in the last five years and it only lasted one or two posts. Maybe I'm just getting old. There is a serious lack of graciousness and civility on the net these days. I have much more to say, but I'll continue later....

1 comment:

Terri said...

((((((((((jase)))))))))
Give a hug to Becca for me too! Of course I remember you two.... I'm so glad you found me. You must have wandered onto my prehistoric website. I used to put so much time and effort into it, but now I update it once in awhile just to keep them from deleting me forever! You'd be amazed how many people 'find' me through it. At least once a year I'll hear from some old friend and it's always a treat. That is the number one reason I keep it going.

Love hearing that you and Becca are living happily ever after. Isn't it weird how things have changed? Back then, people probably thought you had lost your mind for falling in love with someone you had only talked to on the net, and today there are scores of 'matchmaking' sites where you pay good money to fill out a profile that's going to lead to your one true love! Isn't it strange that you and Becca met the 'old fashioned' way in terms of the net? Who woulda thunk it? I mentioned this to Scottie too - he and Mona are also a cafe1 success story living happily ever up in the cold and wet northwest. One of these days I need to email him and invite him here...

Give Becca a hug for me and stop in now and again. Deblin is slacking off right now (ducking in advance of her reading this) but we just figured this would be a place for occasional random thoughts and aimless wanderings. Check in with us now and again!