The Days of Dial-up

I’m having flashbacks. My new meteor broadband plugin USB yokey is sheer shite. Reminiscent of dial-up frustrations. It’s bullshit, like. What should have taken no time at all (uploading pics to FB and finding a map to where I need to be tomorrow) has taken hours. Balls to this.

Dial-up… god wasn’t it awful? The internet was a place for those with plenty of patience, and a high threshold for annoyance and despair. Clicking the same link 50 times, knowing it would only slow things further, but doing it anyway…. to SPITE it.

Back then, ‘though, I practically lived online. Insane. Back when I was a gamer too, and had taught myself a little html, and knew all the lingo… I fit in quite nicely in the e-world. I was a “reg” in several rooms across the net... a triumph, in my young, lonely eyes. I was even subject to (what I now suspect was) "grooming" (but was far too shy for it to ever have worked - haha.)

Then I suddenly got a life (IRL) and all changed.

Now, even with Twittering, FB and blogging sparsely… it’s NOTHING to the hours, days, months I accumulated in various chatrooms, online forums, etc. Now I almost feel like a tourist or something. I’m only ever just passing through. The only on-line communities I’m part of are made up of real-life communities and friends (apart from blogging, which I really, really wish I had more time to give to - but I don't at the moment. Must make more time...)

And a part of me might miss those square-eyed sessions, telling strangers what I could tell no one else and knowing it’d never matter… There's something lovely about that. But...

Me and the net have grown apart. Gone our separate ways. And, like with many old, faded friendships; I don’t recognise it anymore. We still talk, but… well, y’know.
I suppose, this, where I am now, is the real triumph.