I came up in the GameShark forums mostly, chatting and doing forum roleplay and occasionally getting codes for my GameShark 2 version 4 on PS2
i made a few close friends on there. One of them I talked with for years, we're still friends on Facebook. He introduced me to BYOND where i met a bunch of other cool people and spent countless hours in graphical chat rooms
We Skyped, played Xbox Live together, sometimes added each other on real social media. In a way, I loved these people like I loved my IRL friends. I don't know why we all drifted. I don't know why I drifted from everyone.
Now, the internet feels lonely. Even here, where people constantly espouse the coziness of this place. but I don't know how to make friends with any of you. I know I'm supposed to comment on stuff and share and whatever but all of that always feels forced. I don't know how to interact in these spaces. I never knew how to interact on Twitter, either
It's less of a problem of "forgetting" than it is "not learning the new rules," I guess. Everything changed and you're supposed to go to one place to talk about every subject now and it doesn't make sense to me, it's too much everything.
anyway idk. Just thinking a lot about old Internet and my big sad nostalgia for a writing project I'm starting. I hope it'll resonate with someone but it'll be nice to make something of these feelings either way.