On Not Being Online
Warren Ellis commenting on Jay Springett talking about the internet feeling flat and what we can do about that. I’ve been thinking about this a bit too (I’m sure anyone who’s been actively online for a couple of decades has these thoughts) and if I might add a tuppence, I was really struck when going through my 1990s zines at the diversity of style and content compared with the homogeneity of whatever we might define as online culture, and I think this comes from a comparative paucity of interconnectivity and shared language across all zines. You’d see tropes evolve in pockets but nothing on the scale of memes like the Wojak characters. The internet is like water - it flows along the fastest route and wants to become an ocean, which is maybe antithetical to sustaining weird edgelands culture. And this is becoming a blog post rather than a link comment, so off you go, clickity click. I’ll cogitate further and see if I have the energy for a longer post.