When Web 2.0 started taking over in the late 2000s, suddenly, finding one's community was incredibly easy. Whichever niche or nerdy interest you were into, new tools for connecting over the internet made it easier than ever. (and of course all these tools had open APIs and FOSS clients galore! I remember connecting to Facebook Chat in Pidgin). For a brief, beautiful moment, it felt as if we nerdier folk were vindicated and were finally able to ride off into the golden sunset having found our people and secure in our nerdinesses.
However, it seems this had the effect of killing everything once considered nerdy from the inside. Now, those of us who resist the normie-ification and who still hang around outside the fringes have again found ourselves with difficulties in tribefinding.
At first glance, this is discouraging. I was pondering this earlier today. Then, a relevation hit me. We are used to this! This is where we came from!
Things were always like this. The late 2000s into the early-to-mid 2010s were the *exception* to the rule.
We've *always* been heterodox, weird, outsiders, who have had to find others via obscure means. It's just that now this is Gemini, the yesterweb, the Fediverse, Gopher, weird conventions, which is very similar to the situation in the 90s or so.
We can do this. We used to travel just to play D&D with people. We just gotta change our perspective.
Well said! When I got my first permanent internet connection in the 2000s, it opened up a whole new world for nerdy me.
In the meantime web3.0 has arrived and everything seems enshittified. And is continuing this way. But the nerdy people will still find their own save harbours as it always was, like you said!
We create our own spaces like Gemini/Gopher or the pubnixes. And we'll continue to find each other!
very good writeup. i find that as some as the old guard becomes harder to find, it also becomes easier to find in some ways. as some groups that i care about has become silo'd between the twitter/fb/etc sites, the ones that are really worth keeping up with are still around on rss/gemini/fedi/etc.
this is a good way to look at things. the internet is always changing, and the things we really care about don't truly go away, just shift perspectives. we have been there before, and we will continue to find our tribes throughout the internet.
cheers, ~softwarepagan.
This is absolutely true. In fact, the funny thing is, a lot of the old internet infrastructure is still around. We can still chat on IRC, congregate on forums and imageboards, games, etc.
this is very true, and important to remember. i wish more people i converse with online were still on irc, but over the years most have made their way to xmpp/matrix/etc. i have nothing against those technologies since they're open, but irc still holds a lot of nostalgia for me.
another thing i don't hear much about getting used these days anymore is usenet. i used to post in different newsgroups back in the day.
Hey ~bartender, how's it going?
I'll have a blue lagoon, and a catnip'd for Smudge here
---
Starting last year, I've been dedicating more time and energy towards my little nerdy interests.
This resulted first in a wonderful trip abroad, all by myself, just to see a concert, then in a renewed effort to attend weekly meet-ups with a local linux user group.
Can't say enough how much I'm enjoying this!
All things considered, the only thing preventing me from doing all this was the inrush-energy needed to get things rolling.