Way back when

Today is Sunday. The day for my chores. I usually do them in quiet which gives me time to think. I can work out my problems or plan for the week or just let my mind wander. Today my mind wandered back to 1993, when the internet was fun for me.

It is this whole fb blocking thing that made me start thinking about the good ole days of the internet. *chuckling* For me, surfing the net started in the summer of 1993. It was so simple for me then. And it was fun.

AOL was the IP then and they had chat rooms that you could breeze in and out of cool as you please. Everyone I met was fun and just looking for fun on the net. There were no pics just generic guy and girl shapes. The word avatar was unknown. The chat rooms had names that pretty much told you what the topics were. There was role playing, gossip, game talk, entertainment, politics and music and so much more. And everyone just seemed to be out to have fun in the nameless faceless ether that was the net. There was no exchanging of pics or tracer programs or internet stalking or cyber bullying, etc.

What the heck happened?

How did we take something so simple and fun and make it into the mess it is today?

My internet persona is just me…free. Free of responsibilities, prejudices, worries, and woes. Pure unadulterated me. Who I would be if life didn’t get in the way everyday that ends in Y.

But I wonder now, what will become of that part of me. I did some wandering around the net last night after I posted just trying to gage what is out there. Who I want to be next? Dang it, I liked my screen name! *pout*

I don’t want to reinvent myself but this net and these generations of people who are there now and coming *pause and face scrunch* they aren’t like me. They aren’t like the people I first met in 1993.

In 1993, I could pop into a role play room, usually something magical *chuckle*, and laugh and joke and play the role I had come up with and breeze back out. We all knew it was just for laughs and kicks. Most of the time anyway. Every now and again some guy would want to know me offline and I’d politely decline and he’d accept it and that was that. It was all so polite and civil. Neither I nor anyone else had to do or be anything other than what we wanted to be. *sigh* What happened?

*choking laugh* I remember once I signed onto AOL and found a new chat room called TV Men. I naively thought that TV stood for television *lol*. Boy was I wrong! Of course it stood for transvestite as one of the guys very nicely told me. I apologized for interrupting and left the room. *lol* No harm. No foul. I moved on to another room and laughed at my own naïveté.

No one called me names or put me on blast for being naïve or told me to drink bleach etc. Now, people are so touchy. I’d probably be followed to another room and called a bigot for not wanting to stay and talk to the TV Men. But really, talk about what? I’ve never been a man and *shrug* I don’t know that I’d have anything to contribute to their discussion so the thing to do would be to move on to another room.

*sigh* It is all becoming so complicated. You’ve got the language Nazis. *chuckle* I mean really folks, they’re, there, and their are all pronounced the exact same way and just about everyone who speaks and writes English gets them mixed up from time to time. But you would think that by doing so you will bring about the apocalypse the way some people carry on when you misuse them or any of the other words like them. Affect and effect. Bare and bear, fair and fare, its and it’s and so many more.

Then there are the spelling Nazis and the grammar Nazis, etc. It just goes on and on.

All I want to do is play and have fun. I thought I’d be able to do that on the internet forever. *sigh* But I’m getting the feeling that I won’t be. I keep running into uptight people. They are as tight on the internet as I am in real life. I have to be in real life but the virtual world is supposed to be my escape.

So where do I play, now? Where can I have fun? Where can I escape to?

Oh well…I’ll continue thinking next Sunday, I guess. My real life beckons me back.