It's 2026, and I want my digital life back
A nostalgic trip to the noisy modem era
When I got my first PC, running on 100MHz, which I later overclocked to the amazing 133MHz, I discovered a new world.
I could now surf the web, download softwares, crack them, modify their splash screens, icons and, as they usually weren't translated to the language of my home country, I would also translate their menus, using another software to change the executables and make them available for people on the web. For a short time I translated and wrote subtitles for a couple of movies and documentaries. Modded by -=AdansiX=- or similar, hand-picked characters would sign off my adventures.
"How do I..." was a daily question I asked myself, unaware of search engines - they weren't a thing, and the verb "to google" wasn't teached at school. Through links given me verbally and through contents posted on forums, I opened my head to the world of this device and to the, maybe unheard by the new generations, world wide web.
Between dismantling the Hardware and messing with jumpers of HDDs, I also got introduced to case modding: LED lights were the deal.
Photoshop 5 would never run on my PC, so I turned to my favorite drawing/image tool back then: Win98's MSPaint. The versions that came after XP sincerely got worse, if I may open my heart here.
The "Magic Wand" tool was never available for MSPaint, so my trick was to open two instances of MSPaint, paint around the part of the wanted image pixel by pixel, splash the canvas with a chroma-key like color (blue, green, pink) with the paint bucket tool, and then copy the image to the new canvas, excluding the chroma key color. I came up with this trick while checking the subliminal message on Diablo II's splash screen - buy war II - Natalie Portman rocks .
Through HTML, my desire to modify things got bigger. Blogs and the option of "save page as..." helped, I customized colors and frames from websites to build my own ones. The try and error tasks made me learn CSS, PHP and a bit of ASP. When Blogger and MySpace came out, it gave us some liberty on discovering other content, as well hobbies and music, along with the fun of customizing a personal page - that's one of the reasons why I started this blog on BearBlog. Commenting on one's profile "thank you for the invite" wasn't by any means comparable to the nowadays "like/heart function". It was the introduction to socializing, as you would surely check that profile page again - the opposite of the home page of social media apps from today.
Later comics blogs got some attention, like Cyanide & Happiness, but then they were obligated to migrate to Facebook and Instagram, losing their ads revenue on their own platform and in a mix of freely-mandatory way, passed their value to those companies, aggregating to their own.
In the beginning, I wouldn't understand Twitter and Instagram. Twitter was literally "what are you doing now?" journal and Instagram was full of selfies of people I already knew the faces of.
Before Facebook, I was on Orkut, a nice blend of Facebook and Reddit. Later it was bought by Google in the social media wars, as the big G wasn't able to beat FB with their Google+. Not long after, Google killed not only G+, but Orkut, too.
The last bishop, MySpace, finally gave up to the social media that has a movie (more on those movies on a future post).
Then the free web went to shit.
You wouldn't mind the pop-ups and ads all around blogs and sites that much, as the content mattered more (or you would even use an ad-blocker). Now, the power was centralized, the ideas of helping and uniting the world turned to mere distractions.
They - a word that in this context is usually said by someone with an toon foil hat, I'm aware - realized we aren't mere puppets anymore, clicking on their links. We are humans with or own backgrounds, desires and aspirations. The taste of cookies got bitter.
I'm sure I don't have to explain it, but now they can specifically target groups. "23, cis male from Virginia, US, fan of Metallica, gamer, anime fan: clicks on adult links often", or even "X talks to Y about the current POTUS".
We were used to access chats through IRCs ICQ and even MSN Messenger. We would give our email addresses, nicknames or ICQ-Numbers to friends, so we could chat when online. Now we have to be aware that our chats are open for someone to read.
"If you're not a criminal, you don't have anything to hide" is a worrying affirmation. I read a comment on Reddit - yes, another wolf in a sheep skin - which someone said "then why do you have curtains at home?". Good point.
The worst part isn't even that they have our data, but the fact they own and control them, ultimately selling our digital footprint to companies that don't care for us or make out with governments, helping them spy on us, and we have no way to opt out... Or do we?
Everybody's happy on Instagram, which naturally turn people into jealous ones. All your friends are travelling, going to concerts, are going to nice restaurants, have nice hobbies, are good in their artistic talents and have many more followers, compared to your 67 family, friends and school buddies you don't talk to. There are some studies proving that, and we still have to post our latest achievements, to keep the competition going.
The system hasn't failed, we adopted it.
#puts tin hat on#