The Topic of Great Randomness

[Neo]

Thanks, Bookworms! I just now saw your reply. Boy these forums have dried up I'll be joining the Slack channel later tonight probably

[Lazy Leopard]

I can't beleive PM died...

Is it really ten years...

[96bookworms]

nonactive user purge is coming

From DD's website (not sure why it wasn't posted here??):

Young Wizards Discussion Forums

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

You know you're getting old...

... When the Young Wizards fen you used to hang out with here now hang out with your daughter in a James Bond chatroom.

[mythbusterfan]

It makes me really happy knowing that this thread is still going, I was bopping through some of the earlier pages, and boy does this still bring back memories.

Thanks for still existing TOGR

[Neo]

Man I really miss the days of this forum being alive and bustling with people posting all day every day. I always looked forward to jumping on here and seeing what everyone was up to, especially in The Topic of Great Randomness

[Garrett Fitzgerald]

Yes, I do miss those days. But there's so much going on these days, I barely have time to miss them.

For example, I was just accepted into a degree program at the school where I work to get the music degree I always wanted my computer degree to pay for. :-) Once I finalize things, that will make three of us students here at the same time. Taking only one or two classes a year, though, it's going to take a while, even transferring credits from my original baccalaureate degree...

[96bookworms]

That's so exciting! What instrument(s) do you play? I'm a student worker in the music department at my college, though I'm not a music major or minor. And it's great that you finally get to do it!
My mom's spent the last few years getting her masters in Library Science a few credits at a time, but she's almost done now and it rather feels like the time's flown by. She's already an elementary school librarian, but if/when she wants to change schools, she's much more likely to get a job if she's got the degree to go with it

(and I'm following in her footsteps, planning on doing library/information science grad school in a year or two, after I graduate college this spring)

Time flies, huh? I joined the forums almost 10 years ago, at the ripe old age of 12

[SilveredBlue]

Oh wow! Hi, everyone - I still remember some usernames and profile pictures! It's been so long since I visited, amazing to see that a few people are still here.

[96bookworms]

Hello! How's it going? I'm definitely glad the forums are still around, even if it is quiet. It's fun to be able to preserve a part of history

[Tuttle]

Wow it's been long enough I had trouble remembering my login info. I am changing that right after I finish this post because I'd love to more regularly log in here. I really badly miss the forums. Not just because of them being so much of my life...wow I don't want to think about how long ago that was. But also because I badly forums. Everything seems to be moving to chats nowadays and I like having long-form, and slow conversations. And blogs don't meet anything like forums do (though I like blogs too).

I mean I'm an internet oldie in terms of what I like. I am upset about everything moving off IRC because IRC is more accessible. I miss forums, because forums are where I grew up, and where I found myself, and what the internet was when I was a teen, and being a teen meant I was discovering who I was but also, I miss forums because none of where I'm seeing people talking now, all social media like things, are interest-based, in the same way and none of them really meet the slow conversations, where we can say long things, and interact, and react, to what others are saying, even days later.

What there is now, adds, but I don't like that it feels like it's taken away a lot of what was there, and that what was there was more what was the best place to be for people like me.

I have been thinking about this a lot, as well as how much I miss here, since I read Because Internet. The description of Old Internet People and Full Internet People and the rest made me think a lot about how I fit in.

Because I came online in the late 90s. And I didn't think about the internet at all as a social web. I actively avoided AIM until I needed it for school projects in high school, I couldn't understand why people wanted to use it. Where I went, was forums.

And thinking about this, how PM brought me onto IRC and I would learn the jargon of IRC better than the slang of AIM, and how much PM influenced me in yet another way. How this might not have been my first forum, but it was the most lasting one, in terms of who I am, outside of the entire idea of finding forums and that being how the internet made sense to me, and what it was to me, because it was a way I could interact with people about things I loved; a place where I was celebrated for being the highest poster on a lord of the rings forum that month, not that weirdo who nobody should interact with; a place where long posts by Tuttle were known and a thing that was laughed about in a positive manner, not nobody wants to listen to you.

Forums were the first place I could be me. They were where I could love things unashamedly and people wouldn't hate me for it. And completely unrelated to that, they were where I didn't need people to see what my body looked like and have them judge me on that, and I could be Tuttle, not That Body Over there (I totally should have realized I'm trans earlier than I did lol; I just didn't have the word nonbinary).

It feels like the internet has moved on in many ways, onto a more social web. And having options of social is great!

But Real Names! means people won't let me be me, when I see tuttletutle as my name and Tuttle as the nickname I'd expect people to refer to me by. That's not a Real Name. It doesn't fit their patterns. The fact the name I associate to myself is my screenname, that it's not that I want to hide, it's that this is who I am, the other name I have, is legality, it's because I need it.

The internet is who I am. I learned to be myself online. The internet is my primary communication now it has been for so long I can't remember another way. I'm not pretending or hiding. I'm just, this is the most me I am.

But social, talking to people you know it Real Life. The internet is real life. The best friends I've had are people I met online. And, even without that, what about if I don't want to social. What about if I want to discuss the differences in Spot between the original editions and the new millennium editions. What if the point isn't socializing? What if it's information exchange?

I miss forums. I miss this forum, badly, but I also miss the entirety of the idea of them, and I feel like there's been nothing to take their place.

And I can recognize the patterns of what other people want that I don't. And I can recognize how I started online was different than others my age. And I can recognize how I'm an autistic communicator online and offline. And I can recognize that others have other spaces I don't have.

But that doesn't mean I super miss here on many levels.

And tbh, understanding more about my own brain and how missing here works is pretty interesting to me, even if it came out in a weird rambly post.

</long rambly Tuttle post>

[Kathy Li]

Cripes. Half a year, and I only find your post, now. I really need to log in more frequently. [grin].

But most of what used to happen here is mostly now on DD's social media accounts (e.g., tumblr, twitter), since that's where she's mostly resident and active.

I get your feelings, I really do. I got onto the Internetz back in the mid-80s. USENET was our jam. Also email. Without wimpy easily domain names and IP addresses: we did it with bang paths! We did "talk" instead of IRC. Software and people never stand still, though, so the conversations and forms shift. It was website and blogs and forums, then it was tweets and Facebook, and now it's dozens of other platforms, where you can choose what and how you like to communicate best, and track comings and goings on multiple platforms, and we're ever more split up, but also finding more closely aligned fellows.

I heartly DO NOT RECOMMEND this to anyone, but I hang out on...(gasp!) reddit. I know, I know, but stackexchange got boring and twitter got too political for me . Toxic garbage dump that it can be, you probably don't want to go there. Unless, maybe the slow-moving r/errantry or the faster-moving r/books. But. Reddit is siloed and anonymous, and it was pretty much the only place I could find a bunch of nutter tv survey viewers who wanted to boast about all the shows they were watching 24/7. I'm happy there. I found my peeps. I swear like a sailor as I do in real life, argue tv all day long. Two weeks ago, I asked Ridley Scott a Raised by Wolves question in an AMA, and he answered! I've found a half dozen other people actually insane enough to sit through the 12-hour marathon live single-tape episode of The Third Day. It's not all bad.

We all get older, we all grump about the things that are no more that used to be (say, 2019. Man, I really miss 2019). But we all also have to move on, because that's just part of life. You deal with Trader Joe's dropping Your Favorite Thing. But then you find a new favorite thing (well, not now that the Pumpkin Spice invasion has happened, but y'know, soon the Marzipanstollen will be in :-). You learn new cars don't come with spare tires. But you also have a choice of electric cars. All your TV moves from cable to streaming, but then you find The Mandalorian and Hamilton on Disney+. You carry a phone in your pocket. (Okay, maybe that one's zero-sum). You wear a mask, but you also learn Zoom and ApplePay exist (hey, I'm old). We always lose old things, but we also always gain new ones. Mourning what you lost is natural. But maybe having an eye on the new stuff that's also good is less so.

Sometimes all you can do is embrace the change, and find a new form for an old beloved thing. [hugs]. And you'll always be Tuttle to me.

[EricG1793]

Garrett, congrats on being accepted for a music degree! How has that been going? 96bookworms, hope your career in library science is off to a good start!

Tuttle, I totally agree that forums are awesome. YW was one of three forums I was involved in regularly at one point. One other has disappeared, the other, which was a forum-based role-playing game, has been dormant for several years. But I've since met a few online buddies from those forums in person, and occasionally a few of us go back on the forum and reminisce.

It seems that a lot of forums are dying out in general, in favor of Reddit, FB, etc. I personally despise those platforms for a specific interest (such as YW), especially if it's for information-sharing. I hate how comments appear newest first, most of the comments are hidden, so it's hard to really listen (err, read) and learn from each other, or to go back and find something interesting, funny, helpful, etc. Forums rule!

OH, and the emojis. The awesome enojis carried over from the old Groupee/Eve forum platform. They're the best!

Maybe people these days are just more interested in pictures and swiping than reading meaningful conversation. I carried a friendship 99% over Gmail chat and email for a few years, but these days, after college and working in IT at a couple different academic institutions have burned me out, I'm less inclined to spend long durations reading and writing. That combined with the fact that I've had more in-person friendships in the last few years and have less time to be in front of my computer (and I despise doing anything but checking email, Instagram, and quick texts on my phone... no writing long emails or browsing forums other social media, no buying things, etc.... I'm a terrible millennial). But, I do miss the thrill of checking forums every day, and now that my in-person friends have less time to spend together and I find myself increasingly bored, maybe I can get back in to online life a bit more.

All that said, I was just on FB, and a cousin of mine is looking for recommendations for YA fiction/fantasy... you bet I directed her to YW, and even included the link to the website, where I found the post where DD wrote about changes to the website and possibly closing the forum! After initial panic, I found a follow-up post where she thankfully decided it will be staying - phew! If you're reading this, thank you, DD!

Kathy, nicely said about things changes, coming and going, old favorites and new favorites.

[Diane Duane]

And here, in its new home... the Topic lives on.

[meteorite]

96bookworms! Welcome to the august profession of librarian! And don't let the turkeys get you down; Spider Robinson said it best when he said "Librarians are the secret masters of the universe. They control information. Don't ever **** one off."