I got a computer as a kid, but couldn't get online, we got a newer one with internet capabilities (and with my limited abilities) when I was in junior high and then, I could finally make use of the email I had. I found fanfiction and then, my world expanded past my school friends. Not many school friends are still there after that. In Junior High, Anna, Jenna, the other silent and more or less outcasts, JiliaSala in Senior High. They are still there.
Fanfiction became my outlet for creativity and sort of a therapy form. I'm not afraid to admit I write it, we all ship characters in our head, canon or noncanon, meaning, well, real in the fiction you follow or not real. It's like a sandbox really. I met my dearest friends through fanfiction and fangirling.
The Beyblade Crew, as I call them, are the most amazing, they went through all the trouble to come to our wedding and are just precious. We can pick up the usual bullshitting even after years and go on for hours as if nothing's changed. Though some of us are married, some have kids, jobs instead of school, it's mostly the same. Line, Steph, Narisa, Lian, Melissa, all still very close to my heart and very much my friends.
Lord of the Rings crew, wow, even crazier bunch, mostly fellow Finns though, some from close to my hometown, others from different corners of the country. Some have fallen along the way, out of touch and out of my life, some I miss, some I don't. Some took their other interests to the lengths it ended up making me just uneasy so I just ghosted them, not a right thing to do, I know, but like I've said before, Aikaansa kutakin. There's an era. Some I've ran into in different other forums, Final Fantasy (has quieted down, sadly) or Heavy Metal Fiction (crazy ass bunch, honestly XD) and I like the shenanigans and how they also are a bunch that you can always catch up on after months of silence and it just snowballs over again. Shame there's no more MSN, Skype just isn't the same. Justiina and Heidi are two forum friends who I hope never to lose touch with. Just too precious <3 "Ian", if you are reading this, it wasn't yours whose I read first, but second and I don't regret a thing. We used to email a lot, then, silence for years, until my writing had developed and my fandom overlapped with theirs then I realized there was a familiar ring to the name of one of my followers. Reconnected and a dear friend now. I salute you.
Messenger. Gawd, I miss that. Downloading it caused me anxiety, there was a time in my life when it had amped up a lot, but that revolutionized my contact with other people. I didn't need to agonize over a phone, I could hardly call my neighbors can they come over. (I heard their mom's 'no' through the forest, she's bit loud) Anna and I wrote a lot, first through emails and then, through MSN and I must say, I miss it a lot. That junior high time was... wild. Not in the sense one would think, our story ideas were at the same time brilliant, but also crazy and somewhere between Donald Duck and fanfiction.
It's about the same time I started publishing stories, reading them a lot and just... making art, posting it, socializing. I wasn't in any mainstream devices besides Skype and MSN, this was the time when dial-ups were more or less still up, no facebook. I think MySpace was still on back then. I didn't join until I moved out to study, that's when online life came more into play, I didn't have other means to connect with my friends, I had a 20€ limit on my phone, sometimes blowing it to texts, so online was a cheaper solution.
Phone... I miss my Nokia 3310, it was used when I got it, it was a must since I had to rely on bus travel to get to school about 16km away. I had troubles with gramp's previous model, so I got that and we all know that phone. Or a replacement for Mjölnir, as it seems. I dropped it on the concrete floor at school from 1,50m height and it actually solved a few glitches on it. Loved it. Haven't had much luck with phones since though. Let's not get into phones more, they cause me anxiety mostly.
Fusion of MSN and Skype destroyed most of my circle of friends, not all wanted to make the transition. JiliaSala doesn't have much luck upkeeping her Skype accounts, I don't understand why they always stop working...
Online, I've done my fair share of shadier things, but there ain't many who haven't, honestly. Not many. Just face it. Sure, stupid and all, but... *shrugs.
Now I'm on several forums, still, social media platforms, some to a lesser degree than before, but not many friends are on them anymore. Social Media is mostly just to catch up friends and to simply find cool things and bullshit around in for me. I openly admit I only keep some irl people in fb friends because they wanted it, I'm not overly happy with a ton of questions thrown at me, even though I always talk a mile a minute. Should try to learn how to shut up though.
Now that's something that's not easy, when my granny is the one I inherited the verbal diahrrea from. I'm not even kidding.
Well, here's a blast from the past.
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