The internet became mass adopted via phones. Or rather, the internet as we understand it warped itself around mobile devices. Phones and communication have always been cool. If you were “cool” in the 1990s, you had a beeper. People wanted to engage with you. Talk to you. Fuck you. Do drugs with you. Whatever. But computers were always nerd shit. And when the internet was dominated by computers, it was a nerd space. Phones allow you to have constant, but physically limited access to the internet. There’s no full keyboard for typing out long replies. Not a physical one, at least. It’s all algorithmically generated text responses. Engagement on the modern internet is clicking a “next” button on a social media website.

I say this as someone who loves computers and hate phones, and it feels like the internet is less and less of a place for me as time goes on. I like talking to people and having discussions, but that’s more and more ghettoized as time goes on. And that’s sadly what the Fediverse sort of is. It’s a ghetto for us oldheads who loved how things used to be and thought what we had is what we’d always have. We didn’t realize the high water mark when we were floating in it. And now that the tide has receded, we’re left stranded on an island in the middle of a very shallow ocean.