Just-in-Time Kohaiships

Reply: Just-in-Time Kohaiships

Hey, I can take this as the segue to ask you about net culture. Have you ever hung out in the Places… reddit, tumblr, *chans, etc? Your attitude is too lovely for me to think you have, you’re not irony-poisoned or cynical, but yet you still seem to have the handle on “our” culture that makes me think you must have at least some passing familiarity with those cursed websites.

I need to chasten you here and perhaps move to prevent you from putting me on a pedastal because I am absolutely just as screwed and wrong-headed as anyone you’ve met and I constantly have to fight my own shit-eating grin. Yeah I’ve hung out in all of those places, trolled and gaslit-up in my time, sometimes as “eddie touch” and sometimes as “simply chudder chess” - that’s all buried now, I can’t even find the stuff. This lacks credibility, but it’s true, whatever.

There was once an online forum that I was on where people just loathed me. Almost everyone in my life knows about this - because the forum had a lot of real-life friends - and everyone on the forum had little 64x64 pixel avatars. And there was this one popular user that had an avatar of a little kid’s face - I guess it was kind of iconic within this group. And I started using the avatar as my avatar - and it came to knives. It was rough - because I did it for many weeks and people hated it because they would think it was this other person posting when it was just me and my shit. People were messaging me “I will cut you” or gtfo and I really enjoyed it - but the forum eventually died and now we’re here talking to each other instead.

Things have changed for me since some of my surrounding family members have died - a number of people my age and four children. And this has also led to me meeting other people who have had to go through accidents with multiple deaths. That side of my life eclipses whatever is happening online - I just come here to play and escape. So maybe that helps explain my perspective - the problems of Reddit, imageboards and so on just seem like virtual play by comparison. But it’s much more than that - I just appreciate being alive for today and getting to write you a letter. Every day I feel grateful to breathe and be on this world with whoever happens to be here. So yeah - especially you too!^[1]

a realization like this; that the current internet was sick, nothing like it was in my youth

This is a fun description, it’s very true. I don’t think there’s any curing the sickness - life outside the Internet is sick in its own way. I think I like the idea of directories because it doesn’t go head-to-head with Google. I don’t like waging head-on war against the enemy. It’s too straightforward and just seems naive. It alerts the enemy.

I like directories because they’re surreptitious. You’d never notice them. I really think subterfuge and peaceful, lulling work can defeat anything. I’m not saying that directories will win - they’re a total longshot, of course - and head-on attacks have the advantage of alerting your allies, too.

The “post-searchengine era” has suddenly implanted itself in my brain, like a mind virus (you just lost the Game). If we are to collect hyperlinks, to build a directory of directories or a web of links like Indra’s Net, we could transcend the search engine altogether. The idea of stealing google’s power from right under their noses makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside.

I was anti-search when I started getting into directories. But this fragment of a conversation with this guy Brad changed my mind a bit. Maybe it’s just that we need balance or something between directories and search. (Like how TiddlyWiki itself is a balance between directories and search.) So I guess you’re right - thinking “post-searchengine era” sets a course that way.

Brad is also starting an old-school forum to talk about directories if you’re interested. Maybe my question for you wikifolk is - it could be enough to just say “my whole wiki is a directory” - but what could a more finely curated directory look like in TiddlyWiki?

And what’s more, do you have recommendations for “churn” type websites (places with lots of new content I can check daily) that aren’t so cancerous? I experiment with RSS and stuff, but the new content just isn’t forthcoming. I’m forced to look at what Pocket recommends in my phone’s Firefox or to trawl HN for interesting things to read.

Yeah, I should write some thoughts about this - because I have some specific recommendations for link-hunting in 2019 that I think everyone should know. But it also mainly comes down to just surfing. I have a big page of links that list rabbitholes that I haven’t fully explored yet - I usually just pick back up there. (Like - if you just started at philosopher.life and branched outward from there, who knows where you’d end up. Like really - you’re going to find a lot more of the web from that approach than searching on Google for, say, “cool links” or something. Or typing three random words into Google.^[2])

I’m still learning how to get around the 2019 web tho. Might be a matter of finding good shit and then working backwards.

Hey, with the group chat - I have a page of ‘springboard’ type prompts that I can throw out at first, but I have a feeling that there’s enough unresolved discussion between us all that I think it’ll reel out of control no probs.

Always honored to hyperchat, chamy. (oh hey - I’m not saavy to the origins of ‘chameleon’ as a nick for you - but it haaaas to do something with the face, right? Triangle head, circle eyes, straight line mouth? Slurpy lil face.)

Have to say - I realize that you are probably taking everything I say as if it were construed - like Kaycee Nicole type shit - and I totally understand that. Which is why I try to minimize my expression of this type of thing and just say it when it’s relevant and get back to leeching and linking. ↩︎
Just wrote a script to try this. My sample phrases were: “junkie ampitheatre anarchy”, “preempt typing electrostatic”, and “ordination intellectually feminists” - cept I searched with no quotes. It’s interesting to see that Google tries to make sense of these phrases and I usually get shipped off to The Atlantic or JSTOR. Ooo I like this fourth phrase: “cagey gorgonzola admiration”… ↩︎

PLUNDER THE ARCHIVES