I’m not ready to write

GeoCities, AngelFire, later spirits like tumblr. Even, to an extent, AOL’s “walled garden” of keywords and an FAQ page that described RTFM as read the fine manual. All of these were an attempt to make consumerist, commercial sense of the internet. Okay, so, AOL was also an ISP and you needed one of those to get on the internet in the first place - not that you don’t now, it’s just that your cell provider or cable company became the ISP - but that’s not the point.

GeoCities let you choose a name and number, based on your interests, and then gave you a place on their site to start writing. Sharing your thoughts. This might sound like social media, but it wasn’t.

It wasn’t about instant gratification, likes, subtweeting your friends or selling someone else’s product to make a living. Hell, if you had friends IRL you weren’t telling them about your GeoCities site. Back then, the internet was a place to breathe. To think clearly. To call yourself ZayPOD and see if anyone got the phonetic reference to the Guide. It wasn’t about the “look at me” as much as it was about the “can I move you with my words.”

People talked honestly, openly, anonymously about their hopes and dreams, sadness and fears. Comedians, not professional ones - at least, not when they started - wrote apocryphal stories about improbable things. People said off-the-wall things for the lulz and nobody minded. The internet was ridiculous - and not real - and most of the tech nerds with the skills to get on there understood that. Well, maybe not the ones posting as themselves on newsgroups, but let’s not burst the narrative bubble here.

Okay fine, let’s burst it. I’m presenting a rose-tinted view of the mid-late 90s and very early 2000s internet because I miss it. I miss being unfiltered, and not in a modern dude-bro toxic way. I miss being the kind of sincere that makes most people uncomfortable. I miss finding the people who aren’t uncomfortable with that. I miss being able to organize my thoughts with the written word and share them with nobody - sorry, that was unfair, you’re not a nobody - in a way that only a detached stranger can consume without getting mad or being personally offended.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Did they fire six shots or only five. Wait, no, not that. What you’re thinking if you’re keeping pace is, “But zhyv0n, I know who you are!” Even if you’ve never interacted with my online presence or don’t know me personally, there’s a name, a photo, an existence attached to this blog that has so far bemoaned the loss of anonymity. And yes, I recognize the irony.

It’s not that I want to be anonymous, it’s just that these days, I think it’s ever more important to write as though I am.