I Miss When the Internet Looked Like Somebody Made It.

Thinking about my 300 baud modem plugged into the back of my Commodore 64 makes me miss the days of pretending to be Case from Neurmancer.

Dialing into a local BBS and swapping files with strangers was pure after dinner joy. That is, until my little sister picked up the phone and severed my connection.

The sounds.

Do you remember the sounds? If I were to describe them to you, it would go something like…

EEEAAAAAKHHHHHSSSSHHHHHHHBAAAAAAHHHHHHHNNNNN

Then you would connect, type a login and password and you were off to the directories to look for ahem “demos.”

* * *

Then came Windows 95 and the Netscape browser. You remember the one with the nautical steering wheel. Come to think of it, I’m sure there’s a name for that wheel on a sailboat. Hang on…

WAIT, ARE YOU SERIOUS RIGHT NOW? IT’S JUST CALLED A SHIP’S WHEEL?? WTF, Navy?

Anyway, you remember that icon, I’m sure. It was a beautifully pixelated blue-green mashup of potential, bringing you to lovely websites that had names like ALL ABOUT NINJAS and DAVE’S CAVE OF GAMES.

* * *

Then came the era of MySpace, and then Blogger, and Neocities. But there was a shift happening. Instead of becoming curators of cool content, people started becoming the content. Except maybe at Neocities. Wait, you’re telling me Neocities is still around? And Blogger? AND MySpace? Hang on again…

Nevermind. Same name different face. And faces matter.

In fact, I don’t trust ‘em anymore.

Wanna know why?

Because it all just became a way to make money.

Money ruined the internet.

I know that’s probably not true.

But it is.

I miss the days when the Internet was just a place where people put cool stuff online because it was cool. Not because they could make a buck off of it. I miss the days when people just shared files because they could. And no one gave a shit. I miss the days when the internet looked like somebody made it.

Because people make cool stuff sometimes.

But as soon as you try to make the cool thing your full-time job, it ceases to become cool.

So, here’s my suggestion. Find a job for money. Then, make your cool thing free.

Now listen, jobs suck.

But just remember, they are supposed to suck.

A job that sucked is what made going to Pizza Hut on a Friday night awesome. A job that sucked is what made weekends feel so fun and special. And jobs that sucked were what made the internet awesome, because instead of everyone trying to sell their cool thing to escape having to go to a sucky job, they sold themselves to a sucky job which made them want to create and share cool things — just to make the world more fun.