adult human wrote: ↑Tue Mar 21, 2023 2:44 pm
Most of what I've read in this thread brings back memories of similar things I read in the glory days of Troniks and all the other forums. Then it was forums and noise moving onto the internet that represented instantaneous access to information that young people of the time understood and older people did not.
Yes okay, but let's be a bit careful about how we characterize the history. In my experience, the early days of the online were more the domain of the (slightly) elder set, because access (in the pre-internet BBS days*) would only be granted to people of a certain income bracket (or in the case of the kids, their dad's income bracket, same thing) or those of a degree of education, cause basically (a very few years later) all the unis were freely online where the rest of the shmucks had to pay for access. That's how I got onto the internet, as it is more or less still currently characterized- via the uni. There were guys like Pat from Skin Crime who clearly paid for his shit and some other folk obviously coming in on mom n dad's account and then the smattering of mofos coming in on their uni accounts. So making it necessarily and almost exclusively the domain of a select (and say it white middle class) set. And all the (more or less) irritating baggage that comes with that.
I do recall when RRRon first came online (some years later), he was one of the most enthusiastic adopters there were, moderating forums and shit despite being easily the elder statesman of the (online English speaking) noise sphere. (There were others but he'd be the one that also happened to come with the street cred so to speak.)
Things done changed I'd wager. Hence my interest in this idear of a "reality" (re/de)construction potentially being a thing. (Or potentially not, what do I know.) But let's say, if it were a thing, it would start with the range of options for interaction. I'd think there were fewer (options) at some point in the none too distant past, and that meant a slightly more limited range of means of re/de constructing a sense of what's what.
And yeah, the technology and the age. When I was a kid other kids be like,
"Yo man, where do you hear this shit?" And I'm like, you heard of a radio mofo? And even when I got to Japan, years later, I'd hear some pretty fucked up (read: awesome) shit on NHK radio, nonetheless the local hardcore folk be like
"Wow, we never get stuff like that on the radio over here." I'm like, yes you do. Pay attention.
* sorry, I should clarify that in the pre-internet BBS days access was granted to those (relative) few who had a computer and a modem, and an understanding of how the two worked