Reading about The WELL, 'humdog' and Second Life. Feels like this deserves a whole Down the Rabbit Hole.
https://www.mondo2000.com/2018/03/30/a-virtual-life-an-actual-death/
Discussion
I'm sure lots of people here know The WELL.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL
It appears to still be going.
I was not prepared for the Gorean sex-slave twist, but I probably should've been.
This is prescient.
'The Board Ho' - an article by humdog. Just in case you wanted further reading lol.
She writes in lowercase only - my sympathy is somewhat diminished.
Come on, could be worse. Could be all caps lol.
Amazing that back then "boardho" was a niche category of computer user rather than, you know, 90-odd percent of the population.
Also funny to see web-savvy people from 2004 calling her a commie nut in the comments because she dared suggest that corporations were datamining forum posts.
The normalisation of boardho-ing. Apparently she's mentioned in Adam Curtis' All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Which I can't remember at all. So will have to rewatch.
But yes, writing from the frontier of the clout economy
This.
I think people are conscious of this. It has become cringe to share personal opinions on platforms like Facebook. The commoditization of our content has led to a cold and withdrawn social interaction online.
Given that the quote is a realization, curious that they don’t say what their soul was sold FOR.