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Post by Fleck on Jan 31, 2017 2:15:35 GMT -8
So I'm sitting here, watching weird Japanese videos on Youtube at 4AM. Watch this pretty entertaining one about a group of... comedians? Talk show hosts? Something. Anyway, a group of people with unspecified occupations trying to solve a ring puzzle. Then suddenly, BAM! Mother-frigging "Eyes On Me" starts playing near the end of the video.
'Bout near wet myself, I did.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Feb 3, 2017 13:57:34 GMT -8
Oh snap! Who woulda thought they'd pop that on there... that it would even be relevant enough?
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Jul 5, 2020 17:56:35 GMT -8
I don't really know where else to post this, so I'll post it here. Likely, it won't be seen, but it's just something I wanted to express somewhere.
I feel like the internet is dead. Like a harbor without fish or something. I keep circling from Facebook to a Google Newsfeed instead of actually doing anything. I wonder if this is how old people have felt for the majority of time.
I try to shy away from toxic communities, so that keeps me off of places like reddit, which seem largely like cesspools, and I have tried to distance myself from Facebook several times.
It seems like I've got this magical internet box in the palm of my hand which can give me access to nigh everything, and all I do is... Spin in circles? Nothing. There's just... Nothing. Am I nuts? Have I missed the memo? Am I just stuck too deep in a recursive habit to find all the good stuff?
I feel like, growing up with the internet, it always had this sense of wonder and possibility for me, but sometime on the past year or two, it's just... stopped. Stopped being wonderful, stopped being interesting, stopped being helpful, stopped being much of anything at all. I'm being very redundant, which is either ironic considering the nature of my complaints, or indicative of something about who I am that makes me prone to redundancy. Dunno. What I do know is that I keep casting lines and pulling up no fish. Metaphorically speaking.
I wonder what changed? I wonder if I'm the only one of us who feels this way. I wonder if, what I'm really missing is the sense of community, however small, that we shared here on TGPF.
I don't know what it is or if it's depression... certainly, I've had my fair share of that, but it sucks trying to find refuge in the internet only to find that everything has become stratified and formulaic - everyone says everything in the same way and just seems to plug in their own relevant terms. That's not interesting or important. It's depersonalizing and demoralizing. Again, I'm repeating myself, but it's a stream of consciousness post that I'm not necessarily going to go back and tighten up, because it's literally how my thoughts are going. I hate feeling beholden to that little red notification number in the corner of the screen on Facebook - go away for a couple days and it's in the high double digits. Can't let people down, right!? But no - it's just an empty obligation. Rarely do I ever accomplish anything on Facebook, yet I spend the most internet time on it. I think I need to relearn how to use the web...
Anyway, I hope y'all are doing well through this pandemic. Where you at, now? What's new with your life? How old are the chillins? Etc.
I'm in NE NJ and have been since the end of 2018. I like my job working as the Managing Editor for a poetry press, which still feels unreal to say, but here we are... And, despite all the shit going on in this world right now, I've very little to complain about personally. Perhaps I am feeling more isolated than ever now that my homebound work lifestyle is mandatory. Perhaps, I just am missing something that's been interactive and hard to articulate. Anyway, I'll be alright, but I just wanted to put this out there in the ether...
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Jul 5, 2020 18:05:32 GMT -8
It's nice, at least, seeing that, like me, you check in here every now and again, Bob and Fleck. Maybe one of these days, the stars will align and we'll be on on the same day and time, like in the old days.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Jul 5, 2020 18:05:50 GMT -8
Man, I really do sound old now.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Dec 6, 2020 5:35:52 GMT -8
I did the thing writers are notorious for and put my thoughts about TGP into a poem last month, and it was immediately accepted for publication! I'll share the link when it goes live. It's the least I could do.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Dec 17, 2020 6:00:58 GMT -8
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Post by Fleck on Apr 22, 2021 23:48:02 GMT -8
Had a new private message and got really excited. It was just a plea for donations from proboards.
Miss you guys. Hope you're all well. I know I could reach out and get a faster response through Facebook, but I like our private little corner of the internet, even if we don't use it much anymore. It's still ours.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Apr 28, 2021 6:42:38 GMT -8
Had a new private message and got really excited. It was just a plea for donations from proboards. Miss you guys. Hope you're all well. I know I could reach out and get a faster response through Facebook, but I like our private little corner of the internet, even if we don't use it much anymore. It's still ours. Had the same experience last time I popped on, but jumping on today was a whole different experience - seeing a comment from THE Fleckmeister himself! So glad to see I'm not the only one hopping on here intermittently (I've been checking about 6 times a year). And yeah, I agree wholeheartedly - this is our place in a way that pretty much nothing else is online. The homestead we staked out back when the net was a frontier. I miss you all as well. And then there's the poem I wrote to commemorate my love for this place. And each of y'all. So grateful for TGPF. Forever.
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Post by Fleck on Jul 2, 2021 0:17:56 GMT -8
Yeah, me too. I've been checking back every few months to see what's up. Every now and then I'll poke around the older posts and cringe at myself (although there's a lot of stuff here I still find funny from all of us).
Maybe I should start increasing how often I visit, just in case.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Jul 11, 2021 7:21:36 GMT -8
Maybe I should start increasing how often I visit, just in case. Do IIIIIIIIITTTTTTT! I never have enough time to really do deep dives on anything creative right now, but I think of all the stories we made and laugh even if I don't get to circle back to them so much. I think I mentioned that I rewrote the entirety of I&T, cutting out as much of the cringe as I could while (hopefully) retaining the spirit. Like everything on TGP, it's something special to me because it's something we shared
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Post by Fleck on Aug 11, 2021 0:54:16 GMT -8
Okay, okay! I'll check more than once a month now... or once every 6 months But yeah, sometimes I think back and I think that we could collectively CRUSH a rewrite of I&T because we're all so much older and (presumably) wiser, but then I think that maybe it's better that we wrote it when we did. It's hard to create the requisite manic energy required to pull something like that off when you're smart enough to "know better." Still, I find myself returning to those times for inspiration if for nothing else. Say what you will about the quality of my output in those times, you can't argue that I DIDN'T write, which is more than you can say of me now. When I was young, I knew nothing about the theory of the craft of writing and I knew nothing of life and the living of it, yet I wrote frantically anyway. Now, I know so much more about the craft and the annoying complexity of life and of people, yet I write very little. My youthful vitality was wasted on my youth, I suppose. We're lucky. All of us from TGP. The older I get, the more I realize that. In the modern world of the internet, people are filmed and photographed and blogged and posted and reposted and liked and loved from the moment their mothers get pregnant with them. They never get a chance to explore, to learn, to make stupid fanfictions, to fail. Everything has to be perfect the first time or else they're a failure. We got to play around with our passions, to make silly ideas about FF characters in a mall, or write fake emails to Squall, or have an extended fever dream about Ipsen and Trix. We got to write those, put them into the world, and then look back with clearer eyes and see our faults and our victories. None of us are famous (not yet, anyway), and legions of Twitter fans aren't digging up posts from ten, fifteen years ago and holding proverbial guns to our heads because of mistakes we made when we were teenagers. We were lucky. You'll all be surprised to hear that I occasionally go outside these days and, in the course of those adventures, I sometimes speak with people. As I learn about these people and hear their stories, their struggles, their failures, I am reminded again and again how lucky we were. Things like TGP don't exist for most people. They can't vent without immediate consequences, they can't create without the promise of fame and fortune. They don't get to just exist and enjoy it. Sometimes I get down in my own feelings because I'm not living in my "hometown" the way most of my IRL friends are. I don't go to the grocery store and meet people I went to elementary school with because my elementary school is two hundred miles away and I've lost touch with every single person I grew up with. But I have TGP, a better place, and better friends, and people don't really seem to GET that. This place was my home for years. I'm ashamed at how infrequently I come back to clean out the cobwebs. This place deserves better. Hope everyone is doing well. If you aren't doing well then I am always available to GIVEZ FISTICUFFS until you're better.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Aug 11, 2021 20:08:03 GMT -8
Hear, hear! Funny that you put this up less than a day before I checked in. I appreciate that this home is always here, and very much appreciate hearing that I'm not the only one.
Yes, those times were bursting with creative energy and were so important to me as well as something that I was ever-grateful to have when times got rough - even if "rough" just meant navigating adolescence (typically, much more than that!).
It's absolutely true the as well about how the modern internet doesn't seem to have these kinds of places available anymore (Discord, perhaps, is one spot that reminds me of TGP) - every little piece, scrutinized to death. The people those pieces are made of... scrutinized to death as well. It's awful.
No need for shame though - you're still here. We're still here. Even if there's some cobwebs, we can welcome in the spiders as well.
And hey, if you want to read my rewrite of I&T and tell me how I did, I'd love the feedback/pointers toward completing it! I basically hit as far as I'd gotten with writing a continuation and then stalled out.
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Post by Fleck on Aug 15, 2021 1:34:26 GMT -8
Hey, give me a link to the new I&P. I have changed multiple laptops and phones so if you've sent me something, I have probably lost it in the shuffle. But like I said, even if the new rewrite is "better" it will still be different because we're so much different than we we before. I'm still curious to see though.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Aug 23, 2021 7:43:54 GMT -8
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