It feels like gopherspace is tense
these days. I've been reading phlogs
expressing great concern about what this
space is ... and what it can be. I don't
feel that way. I find the self-hosted
nature of gopher liberating and the
content fascinating. It's all so DIY....
and human.

Solderpunk wrote a phlog post quite a
while ago called "host something," or
something to that effect. That's the
greatest thing about this little corner
of the internet. So many people are
making it happen.

That's something. There's all this talk
about open source and libre software,
but the most important thing is not the
software -- or the hardware -- it's
having a space for free _people_ to
express themselves without moderation.
And for that space to exist, it has to
belong to those people, not to some
supervising entity that can twist the
nature of the space to serve their
financial interests. Anyone can spend a
few dollars and fire up a raspberry pi
as a server -- or just get an account on
someone else's micro-pubnix -- and be a
part of this .... is it a community? Is
it an agglomeration of strangers talking
to each other and sometimes across one
another? I don't know. But I like it.
And I like that we're our unmoderated
selves (or at least that our moderation
is self-moderation). I even like that we
don't know if anyone is going to read
what we wrote[1] and that there's no
like button[2] (great pieces, by the
way, losthalo and kvothe). You may like
this post. You may not. You may write
something to tell me what you think. But
you won't (I hope) count up all the
likes and hates this phlog receives. If
you do, email the results to visiblink@
zaibatsu.circumlunar.space to ruin my
day...

Solderpunk wrote about the Finnish girls
hockey team being glued to their phones
in a public ceremony[3]. I've seen
similar things from time to time, but I
wouldn't take that moment (and that very
powerful image) as representative of the
modern zeitgeist. A few years ago, I was
really worried that the young were going
to turn into a tribe of phone-obsessed
zombies. But these days, I meet a lot of
very intelligent, introspective,
genuinely nice young people, and they
seem to be able to put away their phones
and interact with other human beings for
extended periods of time. Many of them
are very creative and artistic, and get
involved in all kinds of community
events and activities. I know that's not
what people expect to hear, but it's
what I'm seeing.

I see the same thing here. Smart,
introspective people expressing
themselves. You people are really
intriguing, though you don't write
enough.... ;) In some ways I wish that
more people would join us. In others, I
know that that's not what I really want.
This is a counter-culture. Most people
won't join us on port 70 (even though
setting up a gopher server had the
lowest learning curve of anything I've
done on the small internet), and I kind
of like that. I need something to make
me feel a little unique (or peculiar? I
don't know). For years, I've been
reading that 20?? will be the year of
the Linux desktop. God forbid! I like
being part of the 1 or 2%.

So for me, the small internet is best
because it's small. Because it's DIY.
Because it's human. Keep hosting and
posting. Keep talking about your Palm
pilots, anti-capitalist biases, drug
habits, deer kills, moving adventures,
furry tendencies(!!!) and the like. Cat,
I know I'm not going to save gopher, but
I kind of feel like gopher is actually
saving me[4].


[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7elosthalo/nusuth/nusuth-20190601.txt
[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/%7ekvothe/phlog/2019-06-01-anticommercial/
[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7esolderpunk/phlog/cycles-of-optimism-and-pessimism.txt
[4] gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20190530.txt
   gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20190531.txt