Man, I am a bit older than you, so my third place were the arcades, full of quarter eaters. I even worked at Chuck-E-Cheese (#1, the original, in Town and Country center in Santa Clara/San Jose where Santana Row is now).
I also ran a pirate BBS (Atari rules), and that was where my geekdom came into focus. I missed the riches of the 1990's, but damn, this hits hard Cat.
Alas, the genie is out of the bottle, and I am not sure it is ever going to get better.
Everyone needs a sanctuary where they can be who they are and be accepted for who they are without fear. Lucky people have this in their homes with their supportive loved ones; a few have this at work with like-minded co-workers; many did/do have it in their online communities; far too many never have it anywhere. And those online sanctuaries, those third places, so easily centralized as you say, eventually, inevitably became 5 websites each filled with screenshots of the other 4, and everything on them was True because of course it was, and then those sites were enshittified and we all were surveilled and monetized and atomized, and now what?
That was a brilliant and passionate exegesis of this entire sorry situation, Cat. I miss my old third spaces - when I was a kid, we had the arcade, the bookstore, even the playground.
As someone who’s right in your age group, I feel this so hard. These early online spaces, the pure joy of going to your first con and being surrounded by fellow geeks who loved what you loved, who got your jokes, and who would stop and explain if you didn’t get theirs, simply for the joy of bringing another into their social space.
It kind of makes me think about the cyberpunk concept of the “old internet” that was poisoned somehow, and replaced wholesale with something far less centralized and controllable.
I spent a lot of time on USENET back when that was the virtual place, and people were just as bad as people are, but it never built to this kind of crisis. We had trolls, but not organized armies of trollbots. We had flame wars, but they didn't lead to large-scale violence in the 3D world. We had advertisements, but they were clumsy and obvious and easy to dismiss as a mere annoyance, not corporate manipulation of our collective minds.
What's wrong with the internet nowadays is the same thing that's wrong with the newspapers and the TV and the governments nowadays - corporate billionaires and petty but powerful tyrants have more control over them than they did in the 1990s.
As a geek, nerd, and creative pro, dependent on the Intertubes for my very livelihood, yet still somehow a functional adult that professes to give a s%$t about other people - I don't want this to be true, and fear that it is absolutely the case. Certainly hard to refute.
I am part of a couple of communities of spirit where there is some talk of "families of choice" ... clearly "third places" - requiring live participation in meatspace. And we’re becoming acutely aware that we are losing the competition with the Internet - where literally EVERYTHING ELSE has migrated. Those anti-social types that go off the grid and nick into the mountains, and open fire with an AR-15 at anyone who drives up are more than a little extreme sorts... but I UNDERSTAND.
One of the most powerful human needs is to BELONG, which over the last three decades, has been cynically and mercilessly weaponized to eat our faces like a pack of electric jaguars by some of the worst people on earth. If they didn't invent the means, they got stupid rich and BOUGHT it.
I just had a conversation, in actual realspace, where we noted that AI, which has been fed the ENTIRE INTERNET- was not only fed The Library of Congress, 60 Minutes, and Wikipidea, but also 4Chan, Truth Social, Preager U, and every bit of corporate marketing bullshit. Everything actually sort of real along with and all the bullshit, disinformation, and manipulative malevolence - and the incompetence - fed to the Machines. Along with every image I've EVER posted to the gorram 'Net as a creative pro- without notice, permission... or compensation.
Man, I am a bit older than you, so my third place were the arcades, full of quarter eaters. I even worked at Chuck-E-Cheese (#1, the original, in Town and Country center in Santa Clara/San Jose where Santana Row is now).
I also ran a pirate BBS (Atari rules), and that was where my geekdom came into focus. I missed the riches of the 1990's, but damn, this hits hard Cat.
Alas, the genie is out of the bottle, and I am not sure it is ever going to get better.
Everyone needs a sanctuary where they can be who they are and be accepted for who they are without fear. Lucky people have this in their homes with their supportive loved ones; a few have this at work with like-minded co-workers; many did/do have it in their online communities; far too many never have it anywhere. And those online sanctuaries, those third places, so easily centralized as you say, eventually, inevitably became 5 websites each filled with screenshots of the other 4, and everything on them was True because of course it was, and then those sites were enshittified and we all were surveilled and monetized and atomized, and now what?
Looking forward to Part 3.
<screams very quietly>
That was a brilliant and passionate exegesis of this entire sorry situation, Cat. I miss my old third spaces - when I was a kid, we had the arcade, the bookstore, even the playground.
As someone who’s right in your age group, I feel this so hard. These early online spaces, the pure joy of going to your first con and being surrounded by fellow geeks who loved what you loved, who got your jokes, and who would stop and explain if you didn’t get theirs, simply for the joy of bringing another into their social space.
It kind of makes me think about the cyberpunk concept of the “old internet” that was poisoned somehow, and replaced wholesale with something far less centralized and controllable.
I spent a lot of time on USENET back when that was the virtual place, and people were just as bad as people are, but it never built to this kind of crisis. We had trolls, but not organized armies of trollbots. We had flame wars, but they didn't lead to large-scale violence in the 3D world. We had advertisements, but they were clumsy and obvious and easy to dismiss as a mere annoyance, not corporate manipulation of our collective minds.
What's wrong with the internet nowadays is the same thing that's wrong with the newspapers and the TV and the governments nowadays - corporate billionaires and petty but powerful tyrants have more control over them than they did in the 1990s.
Thank you for writing this. It's spot on as usual.
As a geek, nerd, and creative pro, dependent on the Intertubes for my very livelihood, yet still somehow a functional adult that professes to give a s%$t about other people - I don't want this to be true, and fear that it is absolutely the case. Certainly hard to refute.
I am part of a couple of communities of spirit where there is some talk of "families of choice" ... clearly "third places" - requiring live participation in meatspace. And we’re becoming acutely aware that we are losing the competition with the Internet - where literally EVERYTHING ELSE has migrated. Those anti-social types that go off the grid and nick into the mountains, and open fire with an AR-15 at anyone who drives up are more than a little extreme sorts... but I UNDERSTAND.
One of the most powerful human needs is to BELONG, which over the last three decades, has been cynically and mercilessly weaponized to eat our faces like a pack of electric jaguars by some of the worst people on earth. If they didn't invent the means, they got stupid rich and BOUGHT it.
I just had a conversation, in actual realspace, where we noted that AI, which has been fed the ENTIRE INTERNET- was not only fed The Library of Congress, 60 Minutes, and Wikipidea, but also 4Chan, Truth Social, Preager U, and every bit of corporate marketing bullshit. Everything actually sort of real along with and all the bullshit, disinformation, and manipulative malevolence - and the incompetence - fed to the Machines. Along with every image I've EVER posted to the gorram 'Net as a creative pro- without notice, permission... or compensation.
Well. Just f&^%ing yay.