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<title>mouths in the wired - Archive - MayVaneDay Studios</title>
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<p align="center"><b>MayVaneDay Studios (Gopher Edition)</b></p>
<p><b>mouths in the wired</b></p>
<p><b>published: 12-30-2018</b></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<blockquote>
You're somethin' else, to be able to translate your real world form so well here into the Wired... At my user level, this is the best I can do. Most people can only manage ears.
</blockquote>
<p>I don't know whether to be envious or pitiful of the people who are able to almost completely keep the internet out of their lives. It's like a horseshoe: on one end, you have the &quot;normies&quot; who might unironically ask what an operating system is, and the elderly people who never learned how to use any kind of computer in the first place; on the other end of the horseshoe, you have the ultra-techies who've been so roughed up and frayed by the Wired that they seek to do as much offline as possible, whether that be on a computer or in real life. In the middle of the horseshoe are the &quot;normies&quot; who <em>are</em> on the internet, but all they're aware of is Facebook or Twitter or Instagram and a handful of news sites, completely oblivious to the rest of the world wide web that binds us all.</p>
<p>The vast majority of people on the internet are there to listen, not to create anything meaningful, anything that would stand the test of time. A bunch of ears without identity, receiving but never giving in return. Occasionally, at a slightly higher level, the ears morph into mouths and speak- but words are meaningless when there's no ears to listen, just spewing words out into a void as if they were any more important than the next mouth's words.</p>
<p>By this, I don't mean that the world of art is being saturated; far from it. But a blog post lovingly crafted over the course of three days, or a poem, or a quick little ditty on a Gopher phlog are inherently more valuable than, say, a throwaway Facebook post, made one day and forgotten the next.</p>
<p>I do honestly hope that the era of social media is dying before our eyes. With the constant parade of Facebook's scandals, and Tumblr's recent ban on all NSFW material, and Twitter's refusal to moderate their platform in any meaningful way, things on the &quot;normie&quot; side seem to be getting shittier and shittier. The human brain is simply not equipped to deal with hundreds upon hundreds of new people flashing by at the speed of light every single moment of every day- and these websites host <em>millions!</em> It's barely social anymore, even on the fediverse. Instead of interacting with people, I just search the federated timelines for &quot;good&quot; toots to boost. Strangers to validate with effortless buttons, everyone in search of the next hit of dopamine, for the next droplet of serotonin to make them feel blissful in such a fruitful wasteland.</p>
<p><a href="https://tilde.town">Tilde.town</a> seemed so lonely when I first joined. Lots of things to do, and yet so little direction to go- at least, on the SDF, it was upfront that nearly everything was locked behind ARPA membership. But a quick dip into the internal IRC network and the bulletin board, and a few Gopher phlogs crawled later, and it feels like I've discovered a hidden cavern of crystal. Tildeverses are <em>intentional communities</em>, purposely kept small and active so people get to know each other and form meaningful relationships instead of drive-by likes that mean nothing in the grand scheme of things.</p>
<p>I think, in the grand scheme of things, intentional communities like this might be the next refuge from the ever-encroaching grime of social media. The "social" aspect, without the dark patterns that morph everyone into rude clout-chasers just seeking that next boost or like.</p>
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