I’m a little late posting because the server couldn’t be contacted for a bit, but it appears to be working again, so here I am. A certain someone decided he was going to stick his neck out and say some things yesterday so now he has to live with the consequences of his actions. He, for no reason at all, wishes to draw your attention to all the links pasted all over the page where you can support his work. He is assuming that there are people left to ask for support. Now the market will decide his fate.

I was thinking the other day about how the internet was when if first started and I have a theory about why people are shocked that talking mad shit causes strife much more than it used to. I think it’s because the internet was largely anonymous until the rise of social media and as a group people didn’t notice the gradual change to it not being that way. Everyone was used to just saying whatever random crap to anyone and it not having any real effect on their life. It’s very easy to sling slurs at people in a game lobby, but not many people are so cavalier when you are sitting within arms reach of someone who might take offense. On some level humans need to be evil little goblins sometimes to vent frustration. The loss of anonymity apparently snuck up on many of us.

That world is gone. It’s never coming back. We all have to monitor what we say and manage our reputations all the time, on every platform, forever now. For those of you who never lived in a time before anonymity was revoked it would be hard to explain the reality of what that was like. Not even taking into account the differences that would be experienced if you were anything other than a generic white guy. I’m not sure it was better the way a lot of people around my age seem to think. I think maybe they just remember being anonymous and free to say and do anything their little goblin heart desired and their waking self remembers that freedom fondly. A lot of people warned us not to give up anonymity, but we really wanted attention, among other things. Now people sometimes to more attention than they can handle all at once and suffer greatly for it.

I’ve always moderated this site pretty actively because it is functionally my storefront. I don’t want a certain level of negativity sullying my area. At the very least I want at least the potential for diverse people to enjoy the space I present. I could just turn off the comments, but I like leaving the possibility open for like minded people to find each other and become friends. It has happened a few time and a few marriages have even started because of it. The site’s Discord server taught me that you can’t just let people act any way they like or say anything they want if you intend to have a civil space. If you don’t go into something with the expectation that people will just start fights because like fighting you’re gonna have a bad time. It took me way too long to learn that for someone of reasonable intelligence. I may know things, but on some matters I’m slow on the uptake.

I guess that all as may be. I set things back to the norm here after yesterday and now I’ll see what comes of that. If nothing else I’ll keep making my fake people say things for the amusement of anyone who happens upon them. I hope you have a nice weekend. If it pleases you to do so I urge you to come back on Monday for more people sitting down action. Until then, this product may contain wheat.

11 Comments

You’re a good dude, Jackie

I’m glad you think so, but I fear your opinion is in the minority.

Now I have to wonder, looking at the previous page, is there a limit on the number of comments or were comments disabled on the previous comic?

I locked them because nothing of value was being discussed. The two sides of the political divide are no longer capable of interacting in good faith. There will be more violence until the general public finally lose their stomach for it. I weep for anyone who lives in a densely populated area.

Yes. As someone who lies just a bit left of center on the political compass, I have noticed that those on the right hate anything left of them, so it gets worse and worse the father right.

And those on the far left hate that one isn’t left enough for them.

Then there’s those who complain about being more center and then whine about those being center.

Makes the 90s/2000s seem like better times.

I honestly don’t think it’s really changed; what’s changed is that the Overton Window is wider. There are alot of things being said that you used to not be able to say. Right-wingers, left-wingers, religious extremists, race agitators, anarchists, tankies, the fash, there are all these people who have always existed yet we tried to just pretend they didn’t; they couldn’t get on the news, so they just existed in the dark, and people not directly in contact with them (for better or worse) could just pretend they didn’t exist. And if they poked their heads out, we’d immediately dismiss them and pretend they had no relevance. But they do, they vote, they buy, they create, they talk, and now they can easily be heard. I like it because I’ve always supported dealing with peoples’ ideas and not just calling them names, but alot of people think there has been some massive sea change in the population when it was really just pulling the cover off. We can see that Hollywood is full of nonces, Washington is full of psychopaths, and the dying media is entirely corrupt, instead of living in a world where we believe all these nice, smiling faces in suits and dresses want the best for us, while we’re all mysteriously bled dry before shuffling off this mortal coil. It’s nice to think that if we just forced everything to be peaceful and orderly and kind, that the nutters would fall in line or get themselves thrown in jail, but the reality is that the people who wind up running the show are the worst kind of people that will do everything but arrange things for the benefit of mankind. Remember the golden rule; he with the gold makes the rules.

Spelling error in the last panel, FYI.

But nah, I still think it was better with anonymity. It was safer, for one thing. And you mentioned what it was like if you weren’t a “white guy” but if you didn’t bring that up, no one would know. I liked it because you were dealt with based entirely on your words; no one knew what you looked like or where you were from or how you voted, unless you brought it up. A teenage white kid from Wyoming could have a friendly argument with a 60-year-old black woman from Africa, and neither would realize it; that doesn’t happen without anonymity because people just feel like it’s too weird, like they are too different to be able to have a conversation. And if you did really upset people…just leave. Log off. It wouldn’t cause you problems. We never should have sold our lives to advertising companies just so we could share family pictures in a more convenient manner than email.

You are probably correct.

My first internet experience was on AOL and there were consequences, if you said the wrong thing you could lose your internet access, no refund, and there was no guarantee that you could find a different ISP for your situation. No wifi either. It’s all relative. People would know you were a stupid white kid if you said you were, but if you acted like one and that stupidity included things outside the community guidelines, your whole family found out because everyone lost their screen-names forever. It’s definitely less like that today.

Yeah, but that was boomer internet even back then. It was basically proto-Meta or whatever. Everyone else just had a junky Yahoo account and was on usenet groups or random message boards. I remember hanging around on No Mutants Allowed, the Fallout message board. And GameFAQs of course, or GameSages before the name change. Everywhere would have on-topic boards and then off-topic boards so people could yell at each other.

The following page, + a few pages after that, tell you more about: Vicky, Reggie, + their parents:

/comics1/1765-wealth

2887 Under Her Roof.

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