Original, but OLD. Well Two Months Old, at Least, Nearly.

This is something I posted on another of my sites a couple months ago.

I am slapping it up here just because I happend to look at that other page, and decided to drag the item here. Maybe I will be up to something brand spanking new, tomorrow.

No worries. I will crank out something soon enough, I am sure. Can't say it will be any good, though.

Anyway, here goes:


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Am I JUST Getting Old, or MORE like MYSELF, As I Really Am? Current mood: Semi-dejectedly Weltzschmertzy

On the eve of my 43d Birthday . . . . {Wait! Stop! It has nothing to do with age or any of that balderdash.}

Ok, then, I will start again.

To be more honest (if less evocative) I just want to say Internet Culture is seriously CREEPING ME OUT, these days.

Sure, I like being able to communicate with folk and all . . . well more so if I can see them and/or hear their voices, but since those things are the exception not the rule on-line (unless one insists on only using those sorts of pgms), I am getting more and more creeped out.

I, like many old timers (I have been on-line since, oh, early 1997) started off in chat rooms, and made my way to web page based chat and IRC and such. But I got burnt on that in record time, and only liked chat rooms that at least were tied to someone being on a webcam.

Then I moved on to one of the webcam vid chat pgms. I thought I made it to heaven. Then my range of contacts shrunk to less than a handful. And these days I find myself with few contacts on line, and those who I have known forever I feel are friends, but generally speaking, I can't imagine making new valuable associations with new people (for the most part) if I can't see them or hear their voices (now and then at least, if not frequently.)
I just be wired that way, I recon.

I have been messing around on internet message boards for 3 years now.

Between them and blogs, they are all the rage on the net now. And I have met a handful of interesting people on them, but for the most part, I have trouble even dealing with net people as REAL people, in text only.

Specifically about those boards? Not only do I find 'socializing' that way more alienating than a bonding experience, but like I said above . . .
it is starting to creep me out.



AS IF




The NORMAL




WAY





Of communicating




IS




In short




Bursts


instead of the real time, real face, real voice, way, that people have used since people stopped being fearful animals living in trees, scared for their lives (hmm, & they probably communicated more warmly and clearly even back then, than on the average message board.)

Anyway, to make my point, I will talk about the oddity that I noticed in the early days of the PC revolution.

People getting/spending more that $1,000.00 for a pc, and spending hour after hour playing Solitare on it. Hell you can do that with a 99 cent deck of cards!! That is what I think of, when I think of how no matter how advanced a multimedia, multimode communication pipeline the Net is, nowadays, I just find it WEIRD in the way only humans can be WEIRD, that most folk who use the internet daily for fun,

Just TYPE.

Ok that is my rant. Let me go find a pretty lady to look at.