3 ms·

you were on the Internet before it merged with reality and the two became one (in the minds of the people). you still perceive the Internet as being this discre

you were on the Internet before it merged with reality and the two became one (in the minds of the people). you still perceive the Internet as being this discrete thing, separate from normal meatspace reality, because that's how it was, for a time, in the now-distant past. smartphones and modern social media bulldozed over our glorious cyber-libertarian future and brought millions of people, all completely unacclimated to the Web and its social customs, online, together, in the name of social progress or something (but, not-so-secretly, it was just to target advertisements and content to people more efficiently), and this is the sad end result—corporate censorship everywhere, with normal people even going out of their way to espouse gratitude for said censorship, complete with all manner of stock memery to disparage anyone who disagrees ("freeze peach", "only the government can censor—if it's not the government, it's not censorship", etc.). pour one out for the Internet of Yore if you must, but those days are long since over—there really isn't any way to put the genie back in the bottle anymore.

krapp 3y ago
The internet was never separate from meatspace reality - that was always a naive cypherpunk delusion.
- adamrezich 3y ago
  it's hard to remember now, but believe it or not, it used to be such that when you were done using the Internet for a session, you had to get up from your Ethernet or RJ45-connected personal computer and go live in the real world for a time. twenty-five minutes ago, I posted the above comment, then got into my car to drive home from work. on the way home, at an intersection, I checked my phone to see if anyone had responded to my comment, and indeed, you had. I thought about it a bit, then, while waiting in line at drugstore to pick up a prescription, I typed and submitted this reply. this is most certainly not how Things Used To Be. you used to have to jack into the Matrix at a designated jacking-in terminal—you couldn't just wirelessly jack in anywhere, about the town, at any point in your daily life. only a decade ago, the idea that a politician would use the public-facing Internet to directly attack or insult a political opponent was unthinkable—now, it's completely commonplace, as common as anyone arguing over the Internet, with anyone else about anything else. now, it's been successfully integrated into everyday life, completely. in the past, though, there most certainly was a time in which it was a completely separate thing, with completely different social norms than meatspace. I don't know why some are so eager to erase this in-the-greater-scheme-of-things extremely-recent history, and pretend like the Internet was always some sort of sanitized "safe space." there were "safe spaces", to be sure—but you had to make them yourself(!), or seek them out. communities were ideologically-driven, not advertiser/moral guardian-driven.

krapp 3y ago

The internet was never separate from meatspace reality - that was always a naive cypherpunk delusion.

adamrezich 3y ago
it's hard to remember now, but believe it or not, it used to be such that when you were done using the Internet for a session, you had to get up from your Ethernet or RJ45-connected personal computer and go live in the real world for a time. twenty-five minutes ago, I posted the above comment, then got into my car to drive home from work. on the way home, at an intersection, I checked my phone to see if anyone had responded to my comment, and indeed, you had. I thought about it a bit, then, while waiting in line at drugstore to pick up a prescription, I typed and submitted this reply. this is most certainly not how Things Used To Be. you used to have to jack into the Matrix at a designated jacking-in terminal—you couldn't just wirelessly jack in anywhere, about the town, at any point in your daily life. only a decade ago, the idea that a politician would use the public-facing Internet to directly attack or insult a political opponent was unthinkable—now, it's completely commonplace, as common as anyone arguing over the Internet, with anyone else about anything else. now, it's been successfully integrated into everyday life, completely. in the past, though, there most certainly was a time in which it was a completely separate thing, with completely different social norms than meatspace. I don't know why some are so eager to erase this in-the-greater-scheme-of-things extremely-recent history, and pretend like the Internet was always some sort of sanitized "safe space." there were "safe spaces", to be sure—but you had to make them yourself(!), or seek them out. communities were ideologically-driven, not advertiser/moral guardian-driven.