 | ▼▼▼ The Department Of Cute And Weird: Xydexx ▼▼▼ (![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) xydexx) wrote,
@ 2008-03-13 13:40:00 |
Why Flaming People Online Is Boring
Back when I was in high school (these were the days when 300 baud modems were all the rage... I suspect I've been online since before many of you were even born) *waves cane* we used to have these things called BBSs. This was in the days before this newfangled internet thing became popular.
Now, being the sort of huge geeks who ran or called BBSs in the first place, one could say we weren't exactly the most popular kids in high school. And a lot of these local BBSs had war boards dedicated to flaming other users for no good reason at all. So after school we'd log on and trade insults with other geeks as a way of making ourselves feel better. (This is kinda why I think the whole trading insults with other geeks online thing is so twenty years ago... I've been there, seen that, yawn and sigh.)
I don't remember what prompted it, but eventually some of us geeks got the idea that there must be more to this online stuff that just flaming each other all the time. So we started to meet each other offline (those of us who lived reasonably close, anyway). And we had fun. A lot more fun than sitting behind our computers flaming each other, certainly.
So that led to more of us getting together offline. And more of us having fun. Geeks who lived further away joined our merry band, and our group continued to grow. Eventually, there were parties. Soon we had a band of about 40-something geeks spanning two counties showing up (40 may not seem like much, but remember, this was before the AOLization of the online world... modems were still very much a geek toy). After making plans online, we descended on local arcades or movie theaters or had picnics in the park and whatever else we could think of. Hiking. Exploring abandoned places. Seeing how many highway cones we could acquire in one evening (and then wondering where we'd like to redirect traffic with them afterward). Our New Year's Eve party lasted three days.
We were geeks, yeah, but we were social. (Demented and sad, but social.)
And what happened to the geeks who still wanted to hang around in front of their computers trading insults? I don't know. They missed out on most of this, I'm afraid, and we were too busy off having fun to notice their absence.
Like all good things, this had to come to an end eventually. In 1988, many of us headed off to college and our merry band was for the most part scattered to the four winds. Some of us still keep in touch here and there.
I guess the point of this story is that it doesn't really matter if you're a gamer geek or an anime geek or a furry geek. We're all geeks, and geeks today have a choice: They can either sit around behind their computer screens flaming other geeks to make themselves feel better, or they can get out and meet their fellow geeks and find out what they, and the real world, has to offer.
Lord Rancer preparing to throw a watermelon off Kensico Dam, circa 1987.
geeky
