Internet nostalgia

I just read a headline for an article about what sites people used early in the internet’s history. That made me think about what sites I used to go to maybe not ‘when the internet was young’ because apparently that was a very long time ago, but at the beginning of my own internet history.

I think that most of those sites were very common. Most people have probably used them some years ago – yahoo, google, aol (?). I chatted on ICQ and had quite a few friends then. About.com was another site I used to go to a lot. There were even chat rooms back then. The site still exists, but I haven’t seen any updates for several years (probably at least five years). Tumblr and Livejournal were two very important sites for me, but sadly I had to leave them.

I still use Care2. I have been on WordPress for a very long time. There’s even a blogger/blogspot blog that I don’t use, not my very first one, because I had one very early on, one that I deleted when google bought it.

Do I miss any of the old sites? No. I can’t say I do. The ones I’m using now are good enough, maybe better than the old ones. I do miss my old friends. It seems strange that I who feel so extremely lonely, used to have so many online friends. Of course, they showed up, became a part of my life and left again, over and over again, that is different people did, but I did have so many friends to chat with that I rarely felt lonely.

Another strange fact is that some of the friends I felt I was so close to, are just gone from my memory. I have forgotten their names. How can that happen? I think I might still have emails from them on some old disk drive or CD, but will I ever find them? I don’t think so. Maybe I should just accept that I had a great time back then and now it’s over?

I had a great time reading and writing fan fiction and even became a little famous in my modest way. Here in Sweden I have been on tv to talk about my slash writing. It didn’t turn out the way I had hoped but I don’t regret doing it. A couple of scholars have used my knowledge of fan fiction in their papers. Occasionally, I have run across a mention of me and/or my fan fiction here and there on the internet. That makes me smile. I still enjoy fan fiction even if things aren’t the same as they used to. These days, I suspect the majority of young and/or new fan fiction fans have never heard of my fandoms so there won’t be anyone new who takes an interest. Most of the newer fandoms aren’t for me, so I won’t end up making any new friends either.

Maybe sooner or later everyone ends up feeling nostalgic for the good old days. That reminds me of a new song by a favorite singer of mine – Darin Zanyar. His new song (at least it’s new to me) is called ‘Take me back’ (in Swedish). It seems he too, is nostalgic for the past. His better days. Now I’m sure he’s going to see better days again, but I doubt that’s true for me. I wish he wasn’t just hot and talented but actually had some magic that could ‘take me back’.

Enjoy.