Title: This is more of a rant I guess. HN provides a text box, that&#x27;s close enough for me.<p>I was born in 1988, I&#x27;m officially 30. While technically I never got to see the birth of the internet, I remember it differently sometimes. More nostalgically. The summer that never ended. When I was in my adolescent years, I chatted with dozens of people a day. Some I never got to meet in person. Some I did. People from all over the world. Our gateway drugs to the internet were things like IRC, MSN, AOL. Never was a big ICQ person, but I guess that counts. Adium was always on. I don&#x27;t quite remember how I met these fleeting, ephemeral, personal contacts. Mostly through web rings, PHPbb forums, personal reference. We talked so much, about everything. &quot;how&#x27;s your day&quot;. &quot;what do you think about Bush&quot;, &quot;hey I saw your del.icio.us link&quot;. Of course that faded, to make place for Twitter and Facebook. And at first, that was great. But it feels different now. So different, that I&#x27;ve removed myself from all social media. &quot;social media&quot;. It&#x27;s all influencers (a word my dictionary doesn&#x27;t even recognize), bots, hate speech, bickering, identity politics, and what have you. What happened?<p>I miss those days sometimes. Maybe it&#x27;s just rose colored glasses of my puberty years. But you know, nothing fundamentally changed about my lifestyle. The internet changed. I&#x27;m still self employed, child-free ... what do you call it these days: geek, nerd? you know the slightly overweight guy with a telescope that won&#x27;t shut up about how great Babylon 5 was. Where do these people hang out these days? If they just want to have a nice chat, unrelated to work, about the stuff that interests them? Seems like a Silly Valley opportunity. But what do I know. I miss the old internet.<p>Maybe this should just be named &quot;how to make friends in your 30s&quot; instead. It&#x27;s different world out there, but I miss talking to people I&#x27;ve never met. Learn about their lives, be part of it somehow. And they, part of mine in return. I guess there&#x27;s no turning back from the bots.
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