The Internet Used To Be Much Bigger

So, not going on any kind of social media has been great in that I’ve managed to keep a nice pace of 2-3 scenes in the SoulShattered 1 rewrite, and I’ve also managed to rework the SoulShattered 2 outline, which is looking more and more interesting with each scene that I add. And of course, my mind feels so much clearer and capable of doing more things, which is really nice.

But it also has highlighted how my entire time on the internet is just basically going around 4 or 5 websites at most. Hell, it’s mostly just 3 to be honest. And when I decide not to go on those sites, then suddenly what else is there? There are no more fansites, there are very few blogs anymore, any private sites with anything to look at. It’s kind of annoying. The wild west of the internet went away and somehow I never even realized it.

Now it’s so centralized and so, so censored. Stray a little out of the defined lines and you’re done for.

Hell, back when I tried to make a Pinterest board for cigar pictures, Pinterest wouldn’t show me any more images of cigars. It didn’t activate the “more ideas” button because the word cigar was on the board name! I’m so sick of some centralized authority deciding what I can do or not, even for something so inoquous as smoking a cigar. Oh, but weed is fine, and no problem with that, and it’s even promoted. Because weed is perfectly in line with the current orthodoxy ruling the internet.

God, I really miss the wild times of the internet.

I remember that a few years ago (perhaps during the year before the pandemic, I think?) I wrote an entry on the old wordpress.com blog I used to have and I was talking about how different it felt to write a journal entry by hand on my paper journal vs my blog. I don’t remember all that I wrote, but I do remember saying something along the lines of writing on the blog felt likee writing into a deep, silent void. And I think the internet does feel like that sometimes. Not in that wild, untamed frontier that it used to be during the early 2000s, but more like just this great empty place where you know a bunch of people are waiting; silent, watching, looking for an edge to attack.

That’s the feeling that there is in all the other big sites too. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, it’s all sterile grounds that want to sell you something or attack you for whatever inoquous opinion you may have.

I think I created this website at the best moment, to be honest. I think it’s working quite well as an outlet for me. The less time I spend on all those sites, the more time I spend creating more and more things. Even these entries. I found it so hard to find the time and mental strength to write as much as I’ve been doing, but now it’s not as hard.

Anyway, back to the novel writing.