I am a dragon on the inside.
Recently, and I'm not sure how recently, because I just picked the issue off of a friend's side table randomly, Time magazine featured an article about lolcats. Yeah. I know. The article basically celebrated the lolcat phenomenon as perhaps the last of the genuinely grassroots instances of a dying subculture. Lolcats represent all that once was free and democratic of the internet, the kind of thing that's been whittled out by commercialization and mainstreaming and the death of kiddy porn on livejournal. And I quote:
Are we facing a future without a weird, vital, creative phenomenon like lolcats? Say it with me: "Do not want!"
I'm not sure if the author is aware that once Time Magazine reports on an internet phenomenon, that phenomenon is pretty much dead. It's weird, because the lolcats snuck up on me: I was barely aware of them myself before I came into work one day and saw that my boss's away message was "I can has cheezburger?"
Now, I'm pretty good at the internet. I know how to dot my exclamation points with elevens, and I remember when owned was spelled with a zero and not a p. Sometime last week I told my (pretty fandom-savvy) friend about fandom wank, a website that for him resulted in more WTFs than lulz.
Alex's Friend: What does OTP stand for?
Alex: One True Pairing.
Alex's Friend: And RPS? What's that?
Alex: Uh, Real Person Slash...
Alex's Friend: What?
And then it hit me: normal people don't know what mpreg is. "Oh internet," I silently cried, "what have you done to me?" I tried to explain to my poor friend that some people see a bit, uh, more in the Daily Show than others and hoped the subject would drop.
You know what? Fandom scares me. It's not so much the fear of shipwars or hot Snape-on-Harry action, but fear of the unknown. I know what PWP stands for, but the appeal is completely beyond me. That's right kids, I don't even like pr0n. What the heck am I doing here?
Now before you tell me to GTFO, I'm gonna add the qualifying statement: I love livejournal. Or at least, I love the fact that I have a place where I could ramble on for two paragraphs about Miles Edgeworth's fashion sense and people would both know what I'm talking about and pretend politely to be interested. What I love even more is the opportunity it gives you for creation. It's damn hard to find a place where people are interested in your ideas, where you can honestly write about what life means to you and not get odd looks from everyone else in the room. I've gained so much self-confidence from just going through the trouble to write down all the things I want to say aloud but never got the opportunity to say. Keeping an online journal got me through high school with convictions intact and faith in humanity restored, because it taught me that I did have hopes and dreams and beliefs and I didn't have to be ashamed of that.
But this was before having a blog was something at least mildly socially acceptable, in the dark days before facebook when the internet was inhabited only by people who thought they were dragons. I remember someone asking me, "Alex, do you have a livejournal?" with a tone so rich in ridicule and disgust that I lied and said I didn't. Now my father has a facebook account and Time magazine has a feature on lolcats but there's still such a vast divide between my internet and that of my friends.
There's a reason I've had a livejournal account for years and go on facebook at most once every six months. I've tried to explain it a few times but I'm not articulate enough to properly connect the thoughts in my head with the words in my mouth. But the short answer is that it's boring. I don't care what your favorite movie is, I want to know why you like it. I don't care about new pictures from a party I didn't attend as much as I'd like to hear what made you think wearing a lampshade was a good idea. Facebook is this strange mix of the highly personal and completely shallow-- I kinda don't want my cellphone number and lewd pictures of myself visible to anyone who knows how to use a search function, and the stuff I think is really worth sharing can't be summed up in a few neat comma-separated terms. It's a handy tool, but I don't understand how it captivates. And it definitely pisses me off when people interrupt honest-to-God face-to-face conversations so that they can check their little facebook ticker. The ironies of our modern attempts at communication keep ringing like cellphones in the middle of dinner, and it frustrates me double because I know I could have it better.
What gets me is not really facebook or lolcats or Six Apart but the fact that I embrace the internet with open arms because I crave communication and that I've become the sort of curmudgeon who loves humanity but hates people. I wish there wasn't such a gulf between people and "the people on the internet" and I wish that writing down my thoughts somewhere was never something I had to be ashamed of. I honestly believe everyone has a story and I'm deep-down glad I got the opportunity to share mine and I wish that more people would seize this chance and never look back and that it without fear of being the loser emo kid whose ashen soul has depths no one will ever understand but writes in his livejournal about it anyway. I linked this thing in my facebook profile in the hopes that someone would come by and read it, and while the finding was awkward and the bouts of "reading my lj while I'm in the room" continue to be awkward, it wouldn't be writing if I didn't want people to read. I've got nothing to be ashamed of, and I just wish I could have figured that out sooner.
Also, new layout at terra. I actually spent some time on it, for once, but I'm pleased with the results :)
Are we facing a future without a weird, vital, creative phenomenon like lolcats? Say it with me: "Do not want!"
I'm not sure if the author is aware that once Time Magazine reports on an internet phenomenon, that phenomenon is pretty much dead. It's weird, because the lolcats snuck up on me: I was barely aware of them myself before I came into work one day and saw that my boss's away message was "I can has cheezburger?"
Now, I'm pretty good at the internet. I know how to dot my exclamation points with elevens, and I remember when owned was spelled with a zero and not a p. Sometime last week I told my (pretty fandom-savvy) friend about fandom wank, a website that for him resulted in more WTFs than lulz.
Alex's Friend: What does OTP stand for?
Alex: One True Pairing.
Alex's Friend: And RPS? What's that?
Alex: Uh, Real Person Slash...
Alex's Friend: What?
And then it hit me: normal people don't know what mpreg is. "Oh internet," I silently cried, "what have you done to me?" I tried to explain to my poor friend that some people see a bit, uh, more in the Daily Show than others and hoped the subject would drop.
You know what? Fandom scares me. It's not so much the fear of shipwars or hot Snape-on-Harry action, but fear of the unknown. I know what PWP stands for, but the appeal is completely beyond me. That's right kids, I don't even like pr0n. What the heck am I doing here?
Now before you tell me to GTFO, I'm gonna add the qualifying statement: I love livejournal. Or at least, I love the fact that I have a place where I could ramble on for two paragraphs about Miles Edgeworth's fashion sense and people would both know what I'm talking about and pretend politely to be interested. What I love even more is the opportunity it gives you for creation. It's damn hard to find a place where people are interested in your ideas, where you can honestly write about what life means to you and not get odd looks from everyone else in the room. I've gained so much self-confidence from just going through the trouble to write down all the things I want to say aloud but never got the opportunity to say. Keeping an online journal got me through high school with convictions intact and faith in humanity restored, because it taught me that I did have hopes and dreams and beliefs and I didn't have to be ashamed of that.
But this was before having a blog was something at least mildly socially acceptable, in the dark days before facebook when the internet was inhabited only by people who thought they were dragons. I remember someone asking me, "Alex, do you have a livejournal?" with a tone so rich in ridicule and disgust that I lied and said I didn't. Now my father has a facebook account and Time magazine has a feature on lolcats but there's still such a vast divide between my internet and that of my friends.
There's a reason I've had a livejournal account for years and go on facebook at most once every six months. I've tried to explain it a few times but I'm not articulate enough to properly connect the thoughts in my head with the words in my mouth. But the short answer is that it's boring. I don't care what your favorite movie is, I want to know why you like it. I don't care about new pictures from a party I didn't attend as much as I'd like to hear what made you think wearing a lampshade was a good idea. Facebook is this strange mix of the highly personal and completely shallow-- I kinda don't want my cellphone number and lewd pictures of myself visible to anyone who knows how to use a search function, and the stuff I think is really worth sharing can't be summed up in a few neat comma-separated terms. It's a handy tool, but I don't understand how it captivates. And it definitely pisses me off when people interrupt honest-to-God face-to-face conversations so that they can check their little facebook ticker. The ironies of our modern attempts at communication keep ringing like cellphones in the middle of dinner, and it frustrates me double because I know I could have it better.
What gets me is not really facebook or lolcats or Six Apart but the fact that I embrace the internet with open arms because I crave communication and that I've become the sort of curmudgeon who loves humanity but hates people. I wish there wasn't such a gulf between people and "the people on the internet" and I wish that writing down my thoughts somewhere was never something I had to be ashamed of. I honestly believe everyone has a story and I'm deep-down glad I got the opportunity to share mine and I wish that more people would seize this chance and never look back and that it without fear of being the loser emo kid whose ashen soul has depths no one will ever understand but writes in his livejournal about it anyway. I linked this thing in my facebook profile in the hopes that someone would come by and read it, and while the finding was awkward and the bouts of "reading my lj while I'm in the room" continue to be awkward, it wouldn't be writing if I didn't want people to read. I've got nothing to be ashamed of, and I just wish I could have figured that out sooner.
Also, new layout at terra. I actually spent some time on it, for once, but I'm pleased with the results :)