Kontextmaschine

3rd July 2022

Post reblogged from For Mutiny and Desertion with 5,544 notes

prokopetz:
prokopetz:
I understand that most folks who are romanticising forum culture circa 2000 are too young to have actually participated in it, but people really do underestimate the unbelievable quantities of bullshit that were involved. Like, picture all of the worst things you’ve ever heard about small-town politics all rolled together, except the mayor kins Noodle from Gorillaz and instead of feuding with the town across the river your sworn enemy is the collective membership of an otherwise-unrelated Star Trek forum whose assistant moderator stands accused of plagiarising somebody’s Yuffie/Sephiroth smutfic. Interacting with members of the enemy forum is grounds for public ostracism. You know several people who actively maintain false identities there for the explicit purpose of spying and cross-posting drama. Multiple federal crimes have been committed in service to this dispute. It’s not even good smut. The person who owns the server on which the forum is hosted is fifteen years old.
“But at least the drama wasn’t political” man, what the fuck are you talking about? This was the era where popular memes would goof on Adolf Hitler like he was everybody’s wacky uncle, and just being a woman online meant tolerating a constant background radiation of transphobic horseshit – even if you were cis! – because it was implicitly assumed that every single person with she/her pronouns and Internet access was “a man pretending to be a woman”. There’s a very specific definition of “political” that’s being invoked when folks wax nostalgic about the lack of politics in online culture in the year 2000, is what I mean to say.
My experience was different from this in parts, but there are parts of description that make me think, ah, that brings back memories…

Tagged: web 1.5