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Imagine how different the world was for people with super niche interests before the internet. Back then, this would have been seen as the weird (or at best eccentric) guy in your town who collects fire alarms and won't stop talking about them. Now he's presumably got a fulfilling social life via his unusual hobby, and an outlet to share his thoughts to a willing audience.
For all its many faults over the last decades, this is the pure internet at its best.
What's crazy is that a lot of niche hobby/lifestyle people found eachother anyway pre-internet. Shopping cart drag races, downhill shovel events, a lot of counter culture movements, early body modification, all manner of shit. People get into some seriously wierd/niche/one-off stuff and given a little time, they'll find someone else that's into the same thing. It's like electrons in a post big-bang universe, they sort of attract each other. The internet has made it way easier for people to find their tribes, but they used to find them anyway.
Now we can find communities and just passively partake
Yeah. I'm not sure it's better this way though.
Sure, but the internet increased this interconnectivity by orders of magnitude.
The LGBTQ community is one which massively grew in outreach and connections due to the internet. Without it, I have no doubt that LGBTQ rights and visibility worldwide would be nowhere nearly as advanced as they are now. Of course, it also gives the opposition the same megaphone and organizing capability.
Very good point! I imagine meeting someone in person and finding out they have the same unusual hobby would have been quite the thrill. I'm old enough to distinctly remember a world before the ubiquitous internet, but never had a super niche hobby to have given me that sort of experience.
Yeah. It's funny, my cousin is a few years younger than me but has no memory of the world pre-net. I told him the story of how we used to have to do things and it blew his mind.
Ex. Cowboy Bebop. Me and a buddy heard a thing on Terry Gross about the soundtrack one day driving home from work. They played a few seconds of Tank! Man, we were hooked instantly. So we changed directions and went to, where? Where do you go? Blockbuster? FYE? Game store? Comicbook store! They'll have it! So we went to every comic shop in the area (we knew them all because we would get MtG cards every payday). A couple had a DVD or two. How many episodes were there? How many seasons? How long would our search take? It was a treasure hunt. Calling game stores, calling small video stores. Finding one DVD at a time but not in order. It was like that for everything. And honestly, I think it gave things a greater value.
I love being able to answer almost any question instantly. When I'm listening to an audiobook, if there's a word I'm not sure of, I can pause, get a definition, and go back to my book without even looking at my screen or touching my phone. But there's deff a sense of flippancy to everything now that wasn't there before. Bad or good, I don't know, it is what it is. But I do miss the hunt for new stuff.
This is what “specialty interest” magazines and newsletters used to address. Whatever the hobby or interest, there were likely a dozen magazines specifically targeted to that audience.
Then the internet happened. Also, media conglomeration.
Fanzines were huge in Germany for that reason.
Maybe people didn't frequently have weird hobbies before.
The way I see it internet widened enormously the diversity of knowledge we get to check. And that's these weird rabbit holes online that create the similarly weird new hobbyist.
That's a fair point but I suspect this has always been the case. I bet if we could go back to the prehistoric period we'd find someone saying, "Cronk found himself another dick-shaped leaf to add to his collection." I'd almost think with less available to amuse them, people would be finding joy in all sorts of weird hobbies or collections.
This is the case. Check out the old Re:Search zines/books. Each is about some wired niche thing and has a bunch of contributions from different people. Folx have always been into strange things, and folx have always found kindred spirits, the internet makes it easier to find, abd troll, them.
Off-topic, but if you don't mind me asking, why folx over folks?
Sorry, habbit from writting emails recently to someone that is, enthusiastic, about inclusion.
No need to apologize, was just curious - figured folks is gender-neutral as is, never saw an alternate form of it before.
Sincerely, thanks! Didn't know this was a thing for anyone.
Yeah. It's a thing but I'm not sure how much it really helps. I'll do it because if it makes people feel better, it's easy, but I honestly think folks is fine. The person I do this for specificly is cis, has cis kids, has a cis husband, is a member of a community that is largely not only cis, but white and female. To me it comes across as preformitve. But it makes dealing with her, and a few others, easier. If there were a real movement to adopt folx, I'm in but like I say, it seems like our effort could be better spent elsewhere.
Possibly. He hates the screenshot and wants everyone to stop posting it, though.