- Whether your politics have changed or you’ve simply become more cynical, confronting your digital past can be cringeworthy.
I've made a point to actively hunt down and eliminate my earlier digital selves, with a few treasured exceptions. Old cringey high school attempts at poetry? Gone and happily forgotten. Few thousand words of decent post-based Sci-Fi RPG? Archived. Also in re-reading some of that stuff, I realize how much of himself young OB put in his writing. The RPG I mentioned was set in a mid-future specialty hospital that catered to patients harmed by cybernetic implants. I was writing from the perspective of a doctor who was once a patient, and in reading some of his dialogue, his thoughts, I really see a lot of my adult self. I was definitely projecting an ideal future version of myself into the story. Maybe I'll edit together some of the better/worse bits and post them.
I've gone in and scrubbed a lot of my older online crap that was floating around. I've not done anything online that would prevent me from being hired or anything like that, but I've been more and more concerned about online identity and what that means. Live a life offline and keep it offline. I'm concerned about people now who do stupid kid stuff and now have a real "Permanent Record(TM)" that will follow them forever.
Until recently a mildly embarrassing trace of a dumb site I made in 1994 was still kicking around in internet search results. It seems to have gone now, but there is still a trace of it on this site which archives Lycos search results for the words "rock sand stone aggregate" from 1995. Someone must have thought that was useful at the time for an engineering website. Actually it's quite interesting to look around that site, which seems to have lain untouched since 1995. For example, Jay's Hot Web Sites is a list of links that brings back memories. Anyone else remember Stroud's Consummate Winsock Apps and the CIA World Fact Book 1994? Or am I the oldest geek on Hubski? Anyway, it's kind of fascinating how this stuff has rattled around for more than 20 years while much else has been lost. Edit: Their homepage says it was edited in 1998, and it boasts of being online since 1994.
I actually became less cynical. I even had the definition of cynicism as my facebook description when I first created it. I thought it was a really cool concept and identified with that state of mind. I used to have pretty unoriginal thoughts and write them down as deep. I wrote a huge cringeworthy rant at 13 about how everyone wants to be "different" and say that society sucks but that nobody could be "different" if it was not for society providing them a baseline of what is normal. It definitely reeks of that "I'm too smart to be rebellious" attitude... I'm pretty happy that the furthest I can find is my 13 year old self's blog. I can't imagine what kind of stupidities i wrote down on the internet earlier. I was pretty ignorant of issues and felt very entitled and smart. For sure I was be the kind of person to argue that if you're not a dumbass, it's very easy to get out of poverty. shudder
mostly unscathed, since I was on pretty much only on Facebook up to 2013. Since you have to be my Facebook friend to see all of my posts, and since I have 82 Facebook friends, any cringe that may lie beneath is safely locked away 2009 FB was mostly posts of music, occasional passive aggressiveness at a crush on facebook, and dank-ass memes 2015 is mostly posts of music, more frequent transparent cries for help, and dank-ass memes. Sometimes those last two are combined together Granted the dank memes are getting funnier at least 2013 onwards I have a Twitter I barely use and isn't connected to my name anymore. Searching my name on Google just links to my blogs, and since I'm crippled from posting anything that I don't consider absolutely perfect, I don't have to worry there either oh, also more racism but that's never gonna go away so whooooo gives a shit
You're not wrong. The game has gotten such an overwhelming emotional reaction from me, it's honestly been a help to me as well. Everything about it is beautiful--I just want to be able to play it from the start again, without any knowledge of it. What's been going on in your life?