It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of bulletin board systems, it was the age of playing outside for hours while your parents had no idea where you were, it was the epoch of not being reachable if you didn't want to be, it was the epoch of textmode interfaces & art, it was the season of the sysop breaking into a chat with you, it was the season of waiting four hours for one pornographic image to download pixel by pixel, it was the spring of "MOM PUT DOWN THE PHONE", it was the winter of BBS door games like legend of the red dragon and trade wars 2002.
To answer your questions a bit more specifically, yes, I remember. It's funny, because at the time it just felt normal. We were living in the modern world, with all the conveniences.. but only nerds played with digital social networks. This was back in the 1990s to be more specific, a decade+ or so before smartphones became a thing.. In my highschool some of us would meet in a so called "computer club". Out of those 2%, 25% of us called bulletin board systems on a regular basis, and maintained social relationships and social personas in a digital setting. The vast majority of people in civilized society did not do any of this. It was for weirdos and nerds.
Now the reverse is true. You are a weirdo if you don't carry around a little computer in your pocket and maintain a digital personality with social connections to those you consider your peers. Social requirements these days are not only completely backwards to what they were in the 90s, it's even more extreme. In the 90s anybody carrying around a computer on their body so that they can be connected 24/7 was considered a super extreme nerd.
Are things better now that everyone has become a huge nerd? In some ways yes. In other ways no. In most ways not much has really changed. We are all still somewhat intelligent apes easily distracted by ideals of sex, money, and power. It's just all expressed a bit differently.
I think it's also worth pointing out that today's social media and our general use of it and obsession over it does not fare well when analyzed by psychologists. I could be wrong but it seems that studies indicate that social media is generally bad for you.. Using it in moderation seems to be a good guideline to follow. Yet a lot of people seem addicted to it. It gives them a dopamine rush to see their posts liked and their egos stroked. What was once a promise of a healthy digital connection with the outside world seems to have isolated a lot of people instead, distracted from other realities of life by a never-ending newsfeed and the constant demand for more satisfaction.
In the 90s we had to deal with trolls and nobody ever got cancelled. You could post about an amazing cake you baked, and right away you would see sarcastic quips and jokes referencing your layering or fudge preparation. And sure enough there were a lot of amazing indepth conversations and debates as well, but it was a more sort of raw and "wild west" type experience. Nobody in your gym class was going to make fun of you because you were insulted in a forum on a warez BBS, your photos posted in an altered state. Nobody would know. I mean, occasionally there would be a jock/nerd hybrid around, somebody popular yet also drawn to the merits of the life of a nerd. This sort of person walked in two worlds, sort of like Liet Kynes from Dune. This sort of person was accepted by both jock and nerd. They existed but they were rare. Usually the goings-on on of your digital identity were completely insulated from what was happening in the real world though, that's the point.
Today it's all mixed and everybody is trying to be like Liet Kynes. Everybody is trying to be a popular nerd. Everything is the same but everything has changed.
2002 was still 2 years before I had internet at home. Prior to that, if I wanted to go online I had to do it either at the college library (spent time reading a really excellent prose adaptation of the
Crow movie - that was the fandom I was into in the late '90s and early '00s) or at London Drugs, where they actually had a little sandwich counter and a few computers where you could rent time online. That's when I first made an account on a gaming forum (the one I will not name because I refuse to give them even that much public acknowledgment). That was when everything was brand new for me as far as an online life was concerned. That first gaming forum was almost like reliving how it was in the SCA when I created a new persona, with the exception of this one not needing to be historically accurate. I'm still in contact with a couple of people from back then - one of them got me into writing short stories and the other was my gateway into NaNoWriMo, and both of them encouraged me with both writing and Fuzzy Knights fandom.
The nice part of that first forum was that at last there were people I could talk to every day about science fiction, science, gaming, and creating stories, and not have to go to Calgary two weekends a year to do it. Being part of gaming and writing forums for me is like being at a science fiction convention every day, minus the authors - and if I want to chat with my favorite current Star Trek author, he posts frequently on TrekBBS (Greg Cox). I'm part of Robert Silverberg's email group, and he's an author I first met in the mid-'80s; in fact, one of his novels helped me figure out my SCA persona.
Of course before all that, before the internet, fandom was a fairly solitary thing most of the time. For over 10 years I had a routine where every Saturday, I'd head off on my rounds of the bookstores in town, hunting for specific authors and books in particular series, hoping that I'd either find something new or would find something old at the second hand stores that someone else didn't want anymore. Any new Star Trek novel was like treasure. I remember a time when I thought $3 was an exorbitant price for a new book, and grateful that my grandmother paid a small fortune for the hardcover edition of
Cosmos for my Christmas present in 1980. That year I got Cosmos, my mother gave me a globe, and my mother's side of the family drew names. I got a plastic spaceship with 3 little robotic astronaut-type people that I've never been sure what they were, but one of them is still sitting on a shelf, next to one of my Fuzzy Knights bears. That year, when someone asked me what I got for Christmas, I told them, "The world, the universe, and a spaceship to fly around it in."
I must be one of the few SF fans who
doesn't carry a computer/smart phone around with me. My phone is a landline and I keep it off the hook most of the time. I just don't want to be at the beck and call of an intrusive thing that most of the time is just someone wanting to sell me stuff I don't need, scam me, or want me to answer some survey that I don't care about. Email gives me the choice of when I want to deal with someone or something - sometimes it's right away, sometimes I want to think about it a little before answering, or find the answers to whatever someone's asking, or I might not want to deal with it at all.
There's a flip side, of course. Since "everyone" has a phone, the phone company removed the pay phones from the mall. So if I need a taxi or need to call the transit company, I need to get someone to do it for me. That's inconvenient.
Social media addiction... there was a really obnoxious woman in Medicine Hat who would scream at me on FB for replying to her comments when she was making supper. She never got it that I didn't care if she was making supper, eating supper, or doing something else. I told her that nothing I said was that important that she had to reply immediately or even ever, since it could wait for minutes, hours, days... she snarked that it wouldn't be "polite" to make people wait for her to reply, so I got the benefit of her "polite" all-caps screaming and ranting about HOW DARE I not respect my MLA, and anyway, since I don't have children I don't have any right to an opinion about education, etc. and so forth. I wonder if she's still screaming at people who don't love this MLA now that she's in charge of health, instead of education.
I will admit to being much more active on FB now than in previous years. I went over a dozen years doing nothing more than the occasional "happy birthday" exchange with a couple of friends... and then provincial politics happened, fake news and "alternative facts" happened, no longer getting the local newspaper happened, and groups happened. My social media now is divided among politics, writing groups, and a few months ago I was promoted to co-admin of a Fighting Fantasy group. Back in 1982 when I was the only person I knew who was into Fighting Fantasy, I never could have imagined not only being in contact with one or two other people who liked it, but many people on multiple continents.
One thing I have noticed about being online is that my attention span isn't as robust as it used to be. Even as recently as seven or eight years ago, I could happily spend an evening just reading a physical book. The TV would be off, the computer would be off, it was just me, a book, and a cat in my lap. Hours would pass, many chapters would be read, and I wouldn't have that irresistible urge to quickly cycle through the tabs that are always open (CFC, TrekBBS, FB, a couple of other forums, a bunch of fanfic stories I'm reading, several stories I'm writing... my attention span is awful now.
The thing about Liet-Kynes is that yes, he had a foot in two worlds. But he was also privileged to be able to do so. I know Dune is something that's on your mind a lot lately, but the fact is that no woman would have Liet-Kynes' advantages (I don't accept Villeneuve's interpretation of that character).
