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Digital roaming.
Jan. 19th, 2025 01:27 pmIt's always been quite clear that the planet of the internet is no more or less real than the sidewalk outside my window. The ways in which it mimics the city I live in are endlessly fascinating, the wide variety of accents, languages, cultures, and customs I can immerse myself as I walk block by block, or from Instagram, to Bluesky, to Youtube. Gentrification and over development are only a bit slower here in a world of bricks and concrete. My natural desire is to plant my feet, immerse myself in creating a solid, unmoving place to live, but the digital world reminds me more of houseboats, and the currents change rapidly, causing decision points to come with more and more frequency.
In a way this feels like a return, and though my hopes are not as high as they might be, I remember the community building of Livejournal quite fondly. Ages and ages ago, and yet the people I sat with through our screens, many of them are still very much a part of my life, some I have still yet to see their faces in physical space, some of them have stayed nights under my roof. Has the world moved on from this sort of long form text based connection building? Will it move back? I don't know, our story is still being written. I know I deeply desire a return to a place where we talk about our worlds, tease out the points of alignment, find ways to understand a celebrate the differences, and just keep trying to understand ourselves, and each other.
Of course, in this moment in history that does seem on its face facile, uncomprehending of the myriad forms of violence that are only seeming to increase, but then, doesn't finding clarity in ourselves become all the more necessary so that we may find ways to protect each other from that violence? If we don't know ourselves, and each other, how do we know what we need?
In a way this feels like a return, and though my hopes are not as high as they might be, I remember the community building of Livejournal quite fondly. Ages and ages ago, and yet the people I sat with through our screens, many of them are still very much a part of my life, some I have still yet to see their faces in physical space, some of them have stayed nights under my roof. Has the world moved on from this sort of long form text based connection building? Will it move back? I don't know, our story is still being written. I know I deeply desire a return to a place where we talk about our worlds, tease out the points of alignment, find ways to understand a celebrate the differences, and just keep trying to understand ourselves, and each other.
Of course, in this moment in history that does seem on its face facile, uncomprehending of the myriad forms of violence that are only seeming to increase, but then, doesn't finding clarity in ourselves become all the more necessary so that we may find ways to protect each other from that violence? If we don't know ourselves, and each other, how do we know what we need?
