also as it happens i’m in a doctoral program for evolutionary biology (and ecology, but w/e), and some of the stuff you’re saying is right but not like… idk how to talk about it the way you are. symbiosis is essentially universal and has nothing to do w/ humans other than widespread anthropogenic interference and control. i 100% guarantee you there are plausible evolutionary explanations for cats and dogs and that they are probably not very interesting or necessarily adaptive.  and biological altruism is different than how we talk about it colloquially, and doesn’t have a moral valence. honestly, they’re just stories.  which is fine, but only if we know we’re telling them.
 
the rest of the stuff actually ends up being kind of racist and imperialist, btw. i actually got saddled with teaching this shit for years for funding.  the subject matter is interesting but often disastrous in ways people -- even experts -- don't see coming.
 
so i think there might be some odd things going on with what you’re saying and if you find intellectual value in it that’s fine but idk if it’s necessarily going to produce some profound truth or anything.

I’m Farren

The sailor

I think we have a consensus on it, I don’t really romanticize those things or even him as much as I guess it’s easier for me to accept and filter out the bad and acknowledge what little good it did for me in certain instances and how something more fixated on that could be cool.

Like you say, as is.

I’m generally around some pretty godawful people most of the time; profoundly ignorant, racist, fuckin back assed hill folk and what little time I do spend on social media I have a kind of reactionary response to all the garbage and ignorance.

I think it’s just kind of easier for me to remember the positive (for myself at least) because I kind of have to do that anyways to keep my sanity.

And yeah I found out years later in a lot of ways I’m a left leaning libertarian, read a lot about the different aspects of anarchism, on Marxism, early industrial era liberal and democratic socialism.

I really love Eugene Debbs, a friend introduced me to a podcast about him and that dude was a fucking badass. The unsung hero of early American politics.

I just find things like that interesting I guess. I know we anthropomorphize and add our own preconceived opinions or perspectives on things like that. And even science itself can be littered with ignorance or misinformation.

I just think it’s really interesting, I guess evolutionary speaking dogs and cats never really had a choice to begin with and in a lot of ways neither do people. Like, how you can see certain subgroups of people adapting sociologically to really fucked up environments or developing a kind of Codependency or different behavioral patterns on what one might call a more bureaucratically functional society like ours. How it’s almost inhibiting in a way due to a lot of different influences.

I dunno I just see it everywhere, most people aren’t even aware of what they’re doing and it just blows my mind in a way.

I think there’s a certain level of importance to it, maybe the context I’m speaking of is more behavioral and psychologically fixated than purely physical.

I think understanding relationships between people, animals, the ecosystem itself is a most important aspect to preserving ourselves and understanding the universe we live in.

Could be my manic bullshit and all the hallucinogens I’ve taken over the years talking.

I think all of these things; new discoveries or advancements between the relationship between man and the world around him is very interesting, very important, very brilliant in a way.

Like; for instance we recently discovered that octopi are these incredibly clever, intelligent creatures capable of dreaming and having this inquisitive and social kind of response to the world they live in.

That there are chimpanzees and I think very very recently another genotype which I don’t even think is a primate in the midst of their own Stone Age.

Quantum, astrophysics and the nature of reality. All these things, I see them as interrelated and imperative.

Of course everything can be boiled down to chemical reactions, reactions to environment and upbringing, evolutionary responses and reactions but I think that IS the magic of it.

That human beings can learn and understand all these things, continually learning them and then apply what he has leatto directly influence the world around him with both positive and negative implications.

I think we definitely don’t revere this enough, respect it enough and try to apply it with a contentious/altruistic manner.

Even when you strip away all of the characterization, the fantastical bullshit, the human ego it’s a very very almost divine thing.

Like a real faith in practice

And everybody seems to miss it, to ignore it, to favor fiction over our own capabilities to create and facilitate natural beauty.

I know we aren’t there yet, we’re pretty far from it, we might actually all die off first. But it’s interesting to see and think about.

And when I read something like Steven hawking or Elon musks predictions on alien life or the advancement of AI I’m just like…that’s the aspergers in you son.

Just because humanity can’t manage to climb above their own incessant bullshit doesn’t mean that other intelligence couldn’t easily do so.

It’s our tendency to under appreciate intelligence, knowledge, understanding. To embolden our own egos with our own self importance. A thing easily stripped away under the right circumstances.

Even dogs make better people than people to that effect. Dunno if it’s the bonding, the behavioral make up or the brain chemistry.

Yeah you could just say: “well the dog bears on average the same level of intelligence as a four year old child”

But even that in itself to me says something profound and is very important.

And more about the community itself; well, if you’re a growing and intelligent person you’ll always tend to look back on your past self and see yourself as a fool. Almost always. And I was much, much dumber too. Though I was never really much of an internet person either. I still really don’t see myself as an internet person. I like learning things. I like involved, informative conversation and interactive humor. I think when I say I miss this place that’s what I mean. That even then, even when we were dumbass kids we had that “spark” I don’t really see in so many people anymore. Could just be the circles I run in, or lack thereof; it still happens sometimes but people seem to be so full of themselves, divisive, and militant they can’t even interact that way.

Still do it sometimes but not really as often as I’d like.

I think that’s the thing I miss. That’s the thing I’d like to preserve. The “oh hey look I found this” or “experienced this” or “what do you think about this” and just cracking jokes, learning, getting these new things that are like little treasures.

It might be different being in academia or around folks that consider themselves intellectual. Maybe it’s tiring in a way. Hard to be entertained or see value in things like that.

I spend most of my life around people more concerned about where they’ll take their next dump or who are seriously barely literate on the most literal level. Even they’ll find interest in certain things like that if I share it but there’s just no….what would you call it? Input? Poignancy?

And I find that the internet circles I was in when I ended up in them with people who did consider themselves intellectual were filled with condescending fucking white boys who were far far stupider  than the illiterate people because of their conceit and ego.

Which oddly enough trend and identify as libertarians. Conservative libertarians I guess you’d say. This specific niche of volatility ignorant; sexist, racist, intolerant predominantly white or white nationalist men who aren’t white but identify with it. It’s really a mind fuck thing.

And I look and look and look and it’s actually quite hard to find people that don’t fall under some specific niche or mode of thinking that handicaps them.

I think here, I saw kids that were a little ahead of their time. I mean if you really sit down and think about it; contrast 2003-2008 or whatever, for the time I think we were pretty progressive. Of course things are a lot different now, time has definitely changed.

I’d like to think we’d have grown with it. Or pushed one another to.

Most of the time when I talk to people about THINGS I like to talk to women and foreigners or 2nd gen immigrants; people of color.

I know that sounds kind of backwards racist and generalized. You can find ignorance everywhere. But I think it’s something about the culture or prevalence of one that makes those kinds of people better thinkers in terms of open-mindedness and willingness to flex within their own perceptions and perspectives.

I know it sounds like I’m all over the place but why isn’t there a good place to facilitate that? Other than the library of Reddit or impersonal social media platforms.

I think I just wish there was because I feel like a crazy person up at 3 am rambling about Diogenes because I’d never even heard of him until about a year ago when I read about him then spent days reading everything I could possibly find and then losing my shit over this provocative, ancient Greek dick-head who lived like a crazy vagrant but was quite possibly one of the wisest, cynical, ballsiest son of a bitch to have ever probably not lived at all and had been more like the “Hercules” of philosophy. A personification. A legend.

FUCK….even shit like the discovery channel is void of real, genuine intellectualism and creativity.

And I dunno….it’s like everyone wants to speak but not listen or think. And when they do speak it’s about something base like their whining kids, shitty job, or the last thing they ate.

I made a page, an outlet just specifically for me to articulate my thoughts because I really have nowhere to put them. It’s got over 200 subscribers and people read things but don’t talk about it.

I hate that. I think it’s a bad, bad thing. No discussion, no growth, no real community just the shadow of one. No soul. Filled with personalized advertisements and idiotic, heavily opinionated articles. The internet has become an intellectual landfill, where all thought goes to die.

And for people like me, who don’t have that access to creative minds or positive intellectualism it’s a kind of hell.

I want to make a place to facilitate that. I want to preserve the soul of what this place once was. I want to find more and more people with humor, intelligence, hobbies and interests and creative minds and stick em all in the same room. I want em to tear each other’s ideas apart like a game of gladiatorial combat in a fun and engaging way that teaches everyone. I want people to groom and encourage others to think, learn, and share things. Even if they’re stupid and they suck ass.

That’s another thing this place was good for, quite a few creative people got even better because of feedback and encouragement. Yes, many of us were horrible, horrible assholes. And many of the contributions were utter shit. But some things were awesome.

Couch fiend and Jamie’s music, hundleys writing, lots of game making and art. I remember that chain topic where people would consecutively write a story and then adapt it with art.

It was fucking stupid but also awesome in a way. That collaboration.

I don’t really miss the in-jokes, the male testosterone and obsession with “fitting in”, the elitism or the condescension but I don’t really think I was ever really into that to begin with.

And I don’t really think or want to even get the community itself and all of it’s members back. Not really

I wanna make a motherfucking baby

A fat assed, chubby cheeked, benevolent baby. Full of people that need or want a space to grow, to push and challenge one another, that will take the ignorant, insufferable assholes that fall through the cracks and not ban them, not simply insult or belittle them, fucking eat them alive and spit them out into something better.

I think that can be done, easily. Maybe. I dunno specifically how. I dunno if forums are just dead, I dunno if another social media platform wouldn’t function as well, I dunno if I’m the only person in the whole world who sees a thing like that as important.

I dunno, I know I can contribute and put in the work. I know I can find a ton of shit to talk about and an engaging way to talk about it.

I think a social media group would be a good start. Have a basic idea of what we’d want and a kind of ideology behind it. A way of conversing specific to us.

Something so general and stream of consciousness/flexible input can go a number of different ways.

Not rules as much as outlines for what to expect:

A place for thought, conversation, input and sharing

There is absolutely no censorship but if refuse to at least try to contribute or act like a decent human being you can go fuck yourselves.

There are no set topics, no specific definitions of what to discuss IE: if we’re talking about a writing, music, a game, or a book and it made you think about another topic or narrative that’s on your mind or you feel is important then go right ahead.

There may be four different discussions in the midst of a single topic; who gives a shit.

BE CREATIVE if you think something or have an opinion, articulate it. Express your mindset and ideas. This isn’t a fucking poll or a census. We’re not here to take sides or come to an overwhelming consensus. To learn from one another.


I think, I think it’s a good idea but that’s me. I am not much of an internet person but what I have seen throughout it is devoid of REAL, ENGAGING, THOUGHTFUL conversation and community.

I think essentially, that’s what made this place important to us and it’s what I’d like to preserve and shape into something even better.

didn't you buy a camaro once instead of investing in government bonds

I bought a challenger and I don’t remember anything about government bonds, I remember trying to decide between buying a challenger or a house to get my credit up.

Which I’m kind of glad I didn’t buy a house because the challenger is paid off and my work can be far too unstable to invest in a home besides still not really ever living in one.

Yeah I used to play with hallucinogens to help me perceive things from a different angle or ponder these things.

Now my brain just does it, I actually take things to slow me down and give me a break from it because it is psychologically exhausting. At work I can’t though and I’ll be doing something like using a pneumatic hammer thing to break up rust, rigging, or tying the boat up thinking about the path of human civilization or the nature or reality or my own existential placement. Like the relative amount of free will I legitimately have or if it’s a lot of external conditioning and my own psychological makeup that makes me the off kind of person I am.

I get irritated by it, it’s like having a 3rd party in your head or part of your brain that’s actually autonomous that keeps fucking with you.

“EYYY BOI’ WHADDABOUT DIS? AN DIS AN DIS AND DAT!?”

After a short while of no longer being amused by it and compounding sleepless nights I’m like: “FFFFF SHUT THE FUCK UP!”

They want me to stay over alot on these tugboats. I try to explain it but it is a very hard thing to explain. It’s like physiologically going through a rite of passage, slowly that gains momentum over time.

Eventually I absolutely don’t wanna deal with it anymore. It’s alot. I can but I don’t fucking want to.

I used to be terrified of taking shit like DMT because I was afraid I’d go through the rabbit hole and not come back. Not be relatable or able to connect intellectually with most other people.

In a way I just ended up like that anyways. I can understand others but I’m too much or interested/talk about things they don’t get or find the importance to.

I dunno what happened exactly. Physician told me I have something called hypomania but it’s weird as fuck. I’ve met manic people and I can understand them and what they deal with but I’m more grounded, rooted.

I dunno if that’s just my personality counteracting it or all the shit I took.

I’m gonna read it, it sounds really interesting and something like what I was thinking about.

I was reading /throwawayalien on Reddit yesterday and I found it really really interesting.

Strictly in a fictitious kind of way. I think people took it all too seriously and got caught up in whether or not there was any truth to it. Who cares.

For anyone who doesn’t know it’s the account of some abductee who describes greys picking him up and being more “friendly” than conventional accounts.

It’s different

There’s alot of things in it that I found funny and interesting like they kept questioning him. Showing him “found footage” of humans doing shit or talking or certain objects and being like: “WHATS THAT!?”

But they’d speak to him telepathically. He had to speak verbally, they couldn’t read his mind. When they’d “speak” they’d fuck their vowels up or couldn’t understand wtf he was saying completely.

Like, he had to keep yelling and repeating himself slowly

And they’d offer him a “bowl of salt” throughout every abduction. Like it was an offering for his trouble.

Also whenever they’d get him he’d be running down the road or something and they’d be waiting. One time actually knocked on his door.

“ITS THAT TIME AGAIN BILLY!”

It’s funny as fuck to think about.

One time they showed him a clip of 2001 a space odyssey’s HAL that they received through a transmission I guess

They showed it to him and asked, “IS THIS A JOKE!?”

Because they didn’t get the context of a joke. He would tell them jokes and they’d make a weird squeaking sound as if to impersonate laughter to be polite.

I don’t really buy any of that shit but it’s a fun read, it’s interesting. It’s the mistakes and behavioral nuances that make it so interesting to me. Adds a certain level of realism I guess.

I think you can get that confident creativity when the community standard is so low that everyone is the town fuck-up. There's no fear of being the local idiot if you're surrounded by complete derelicts babbling nonsense. After years of gestation in a womb of stupidity, eventually people start doing amazing things. But if the price is years of awfulness, no sane person will finance it.

Regardless of maturity, the thing I miss the most is the creativity. Maybe I've just been going to all the wrong places or maybe the problem is just with me personally, but it certainly seems like the internet is less about creating and more about consuming. Even something like youtube, where you can upload pretty much whatever you want, is really not about the creators but the advertisers. Communities like reddit host discussion, but the format feels geared toward fishing for upvotes. There is also the issue of containment. Content on huge platforms like reddit and twitter ooze out into other parts of the behemoth and so your audience is often a lot of randos. It lacks personality. Granted, that "personality" can be awful. I would've liked to have posted my work here, but I was too scared that I was going to get shit on, which feels more devastating when the group is smaller. Like if you fuck up in a small village, everyone knows you as that guy who fucked up that one time, whereas in a big city you're less likely to have a reputation that sticks.

Anyway, that creative drive to write, compose, draw, code, etc is really special and that was cultivated here (excepting some toxic behavior). Even discussion is enhanced with the message board format as posts are allowed to breathe instead of being buried in a mass of concurrent threads that aren't separated enough. Reddit and especially twitter just aren't conducive to in-depth discussion. Posts can have images, and I know in the past there was some support for arbitrary HTML. That's something I miss about that period of the internet: being more open to customization. MySpace allowed for a lot more personalization than what many platforms do now. Sure a lot of it was awful, but it was personal.

I used to hunger for learning and creating, but nowadays I feel too drained after working my regular job. That could be part of it, just getting old and settling into a mundane life because, hell, it's a living. It would be nice to feel the energy of the past, maybe it just needs a community to be a part of, encouraging creativity, lighting the fire...

Exactly! Exactly!

I feel like what my boy said earlier; towards the end we were developing as a precursor to something like that.

And I feel you’re exactly right; this kind of thing is exactly what in the larger scope of things the internet is missing.

And I get the “drained feeling”; sometimes I feel that way too. Like, a mental exhaustion from all the ignorant bullshit and static and yes we are older. Busier, less inclined to be fixated on small hobbies or obscure communities.

But the way I see it; these things are a muscle you have to exercise and it’s the inability to effectively do so that makes the pursuit seem fruitless.


Me, I don’t give a shit. I do it all by myself; fuck what people think cus most of em don’t.


And I feel like if a thing like that WERE created, was successful. It could potentially help in even the smallest of ways. Even if you’re not dumping the next shut up and jam into a sub forum just TALKING about and SHARING shit in a kind of positive reinforced, conducive environment could do so, so much.

I think even then, even towards the end. Many of us had changed, probably more so now. I think the immaturity and net bullying bullshit is pretty much dead.

I mean if someone is just volatile kind of ignorant or stubborn I might fuck with them but I try to make it fun, make a game out of it.

Usually even people you fuck with find it funny if you’re not a total dick about it.  

Like…to me

Imagine a Reddit that was more organized, more intimate. Like, yeah it could potentially have thousands and thousands of members but there are always ones that will stick out; like Huntley, chef, dietcoke, steel

And I dunno about the technical aspect of it, I’m no web designer but I feel like a forum layout with something like Java or flash to help facilitate personalization and posting media would be great.


I kind of like the upvoting system and merit systems but I do feel like there’s a better way to do it. Like, emboldening posts that are profound, informative or relatively important.

Dunno if that should be a mod regulated thing or a voting system

I'm joking, I'm joking! I'm jealous. Do you remember the general time period you were an active member, waitress? there were certainly a lot of awful things from the real old days. lotsa prolly prot-incels on the internet at the time, but I also think there were things of value from then as well.

I think I was probably extremely active from about 2003 to 2010? after that, not so much. I definitely ditched the whole admin thing towards the very end, and I feel like that was around 2009 or so. I think by then I was just aging out of the place, and a lot of people I used to talk to had moved on as well. I also just like... didn't want to be the internet persona headphonics, so I spent a number of years avoiding any socializing in internet communities whatsoever. it was like a cleanse. I remember catamites showing up and being way too cool for anyone else here, and after that other people started coming around and it seemed like a cooler place, but I was already gone so I mostly just felt good about the community developing into something better and more interesting and considerably stranger. I didn't feel like I had any real place in it, but I thought that the people who did were probably a lot less terrible than I was. unlike other members I feel like this place so consistently incentivized sneering critiques of ________ that it actively stifled my ability to think creatively. I think that probably changed a lot after I left tho

but yeah, what I remember most at this point was the incel-adjacent shit. it seems obvious in hindsight. there was a lot of dope shit, though; I'm not trying to say there wasn't. I learned to love video games and began developing a critical lens for art in general here, I had friends and a place to kick it. I've spent a large majority of my life being incredibly certain I don't entirely belong in the room I'm in, and that's fine, but this was one of two places where I was able to feel like I was in the right room, even if I'm embarrassed about it.

maybe the most important thing is that this place left me discontent with my real life friendships and I think it taught me to expect more from connections off the internet, and to try to feel less hostility towards strangers because they didn't get me or whatever. also, steel dying was of the most important points in my early adulthood. I remember sitting around finding it strange that I couldn't talk to him and eventually coming to terms with the fact that it was such a waste to feel ashamed of loving people and of loving other men and of refusing to accept the vulnerability that came with that. so the place was toxic, but I think I came away from it with a better sense of how my anxieties and insecurities about all that stuff had ultimately been the cause of my needing this community to begin with, and that paradoxically the community itself was probably the biggest source of loneliness. so I guess you could say the ~most important lesson~ that I learned here was that I should leave immediately

so all of that was cool, but I can't bring myself to feel any nostalgia, like, at all. even with everything I said above, I remember the doxxing and borderline-hate speech and rampant misogyny and the actual child pornography the most vividly. it's hard for me to talk about that shit with people while still being able to credibly articulate any positive impact being here could have had, and at a certain point you kinda start to understand where they're coming from. I'm glad other people don't necessarily feel the same, though

I made a backup forum just in case this place goes down or if things crack under the pressure of a thousand rampant ai bots. If you want the link, just message me.

What do you mean by “backup forum”?

Like, an exact replica? And I guess yeah, sure I’d like to look at it.

You intend, or would want even to do something with it?

I get what you mean headphonics and I understand where you’re coming from.

Would you say it’s a combination of some sort of trauma or regret over your past self?

I have that everyday; I have that today leftover from yesterday.

I think the worrying over failure or of doing or saying stupid shit is weak sauce. I think being over critical of oneself is stifling; but also important for growth.

I think through the better parts certain forms of optimistic criticism really helped me grow. The good kind though.

That’s why I kind of like the idea of taking out all of the “good shit”; the creativity, humor, intelligence and conversation then letting the damn thing burn to the ground.

Remake something better and fitting; bring in more folks.

Like, even casually speaking. Even just molding a new forum and maybe putting links or advertisements out then just posting in the way we always have I think it’d grow. Not a whole lotta effort, natural