Epicenters of degeneracy. Purgatories for the socially inept and underdeveloped. Criteria: cheap; popular; acceptable performance on even the worst systems; customizable, presumably towards some flavor of anime. Welcome to adolescent hell.
We were never meant to thrive in typical social scenarios, yet we still tried to cling towards community. In a medium that moved more towards matchmaking, I spent a large chunk of my teens seeking out the last throes of an essential online experience. Servers populated with familiar people at similar times; this was our third place. Forums to discuss, cliques that talked bad behind backs, administrators and moderators that reveled in the only power they had in their lives. People came and went, servers shut down and successors were erected quickly after, friends and eternal memories were made in ugly maps while annoying music played and a child screamed into their cheap microphone. The systems and mechanics of the mode itself became secondary to the reality that the regulars really just wanted to hang out and crack jokes, sometimes at the expense of newcomers—outsiders.
The move towards virtual worlds as a central social space shouldn’t be too surprising, the shift really started in the 1990s. Nerds that just wanted to find their “people,” even if those people had questionable morals and liberal use of slurs. The appeal is obvious, though: Be anyone you want, control how people perceive you; a second life where the first one “failed.” Grow in a way the “real world” could never allow you to. The worst thing to realize is that everyone else there is a loser just like you, maybe even worse than you are. It’s hard to look back and not have some pity for them—for yourself. We were just sad, I think. That tends to be the epiphany you come to on a reflection of youth. You don’t realize it at the time, it’s just afterwards, when you reach some invisible limit. Maybe virtual lives are becoming more mainstream, but deluding ourselves into romanticizing the past as somehow more appreciable and respectable is just a little silly—a little disrespectful, too. I was there, I grew up in it; we shouldn’t go back. We can’t, thankfully. Let’s shut the door and find a way forward.
We were never meant to thrive in typical social scenarios, yet we still tried to cling towards community. In a medium that moved more towards matchmaking, I spent a large chunk of my teens seeking out the last throes of an essential online experience. Servers populated with familiar people at similar times; this was our third place. Forums to discuss, cliques that talked bad behind backs, administrators and moderators that reveled in the only power they had in their lives. People came and went, servers shut down and successors were erected quickly after, friends and eternal memories were made in ugly maps while annoying music played and a child screamed into their cheap microphone. The systems and mechanics of the mode itself became secondary to the reality that the regulars really just wanted to hang out and crack jokes, sometimes at the expense of newcomers—outsiders.
The move towards virtual worlds as a central social space shouldn’t be too surprising, the shift really started in the 1990s. Nerds that just wanted to find their “people,” even if those people had questionable morals and liberal use of slurs. The appeal is obvious, though: Be anyone you want, control how people perceive you; a second life where the first one “failed.” Grow in a way the “real world” could never allow you to. The worst thing to realize is that everyone else there is a loser just like you, maybe even worse than you are. It’s hard to look back and not have some pity for them—for yourself. We were just sad, I think. That tends to be the epiphany you come to on a reflection of youth. You don’t realize it at the time, it’s just afterwards, when you reach some invisible limit. Maybe virtual lives are becoming more mainstream, but deluding ourselves into romanticizing the past as somehow more appreciable and respectable is just a little silly—a little disrespectful, too. I was there, I grew up in it; we shouldn’t go back. We can’t, thankfully. Let’s shut the door and find a way forward.