back in the mid 90s when the internet was brand new

my mind was blown on a near monthly, sometimes weekly basis

so many new ways to communicate. all of these new friends, and you could divide your friends between your "new friends" who were all online, and your "old friends" (and usually family) who were not.

[Like Dad. Dad wasn't online. You want to talk to dad, you call him up, and if he's not home, no one answers the phone. Guess he went to go visit Uncle Wilbur. Try again later.]

When I first got online in the mid 90s the internet felt very small. You could easily go to every single webpage on a certain topic in a few minutes. Read them all, every word on a single topic on every page that was all linked together in this hairy mess, well you could do that in an hour or two.

There were no search engines, and yet it felt like everybody knew everybody

And then years later tilde.club comes along and I keep finding all of these cool people who were out there all along that I had never ran into before.

I thought we were all in this together, and I think we sort of were but everyone was in these pockets and groups of people. Moving mostly in the same direction but still set apart.

Thinking about it now, I'm feeling a kind of a weird form of jubilant disillusionment.

The "modern" internet is just people and corporations and robots all together in a giant pile. It's like the difference between living in a local little village and living right in the middle of Manhattan.

Sometimes I miss small city life, other times I am really glad I can see any movie I want in the theater or I can get my car fixed a few blocks away from my house.