A few days ago, Brandon posted about feeling tired of the internet. I sent him an e-mail to say hello and said that I was feeling actively excited about the internet especially e-mail, RSS, and comments-free blogs. I didn’t go too deep in the e-mail and I thought I should follow-up with a post about why I feel so excited about the internet.
First up, telepathy — the supernatural ability to communicate at long distances, silently and invisibly, by power of mind alone. It’s a magical ability that, as it turns out, we all have a little bit1. The internet lets you be just a smidge telepathic with other people and that’s incredible in itself. I can’t really magically read the minds of twenty-somethings living half-way across the world, but I can online.
Next, I think I’ve recently figured out my own preferred way to engage with the internet. This makes it a lot more enjoyable and exciting. For the first twenty or so years that I was online, I was primarily a spectator. Sure, I blogged a bit. I had a Livejournal, and then a Deadjournal, and then other things. I browsed a huge amount of Wikipedia and later Reddit. But, in all that time, I never really interacted much. I never ever reached out to a webpage’s author.
It turns out that, for me, chatting back-and-forth by e-mail is a real pleasure. I love hearing from my internet e-mail friends2. The internet has recently become, for me, much more social.
Another aspect of going from spectator to participant is running my own website. It took me a long time to figure out Hugo, the static site generator that I use. Now that I’ve got a sense of how it works, I like tinkering with it. The act of maintaining my own site is pleasurable.
A lot of my recent tinkering has been around RSS feeds. I am really fascinated by RSS. It’s such a simple technology but it is so powerful. I like it because there is no hidden layer. You’re getting all the unfiltered content from the creator directly. I know exactly that’s happening when I add or delete a feed from my reader. It isn’t some weird algorithmic black box that magically responds to my up-votes, or browsing history, or credit card bill. RSS feels like the right tool for selectively engaging with the internet.
And this is the last piece of why I am so excited about the internet right now. I realized that I can be really selective about what I read and how much of it I read. If someone starts posting too much stuff about mechanical typewriters3, I unsubscribe. If I really vibe with someone and enjoy what they’re doing, I subscribe. Usually, I’ll also shoot the author an e-mail to thank them for writing.
In conclusion, I’m excited about the internet because I really like the experience of being in other people’s lives, chatting, maintaining a social group online, curating my own corner of the internet, and managing my own consumption. If I have any advice to give, it is:
Go browse people’s blogrolls until you find a group of weirdo-s who suit you. Send them e-mails to say that you enjoy their writing. They’ll appreciate it.
P.S. Reading over this post, I realize that it’s rather personal and timeless. There is nothing especially relevant to this present moment here. Someone could have had these exact insights in 2005, instead of 2025. I don’t think that that necessarily invalidates my points above, but it is worth noting.
I’m going to sound a bit ridiculous in this footnote, but I actually believe that real-world humans can communicated telepathically in real life. I have absolutely no explanation of this but I’ve had enough spooky experiences with it that I’m convinced. ↩︎
Penpals? Correspondents? Friends? What’s the word I want here? ↩︎
Pace Chris Aldrich. ↩︎
Published: Apr 7, 2025 @ 08:31.
Last Modified: Apr 10, 2025 @ 08:48.
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