I remember this from my first, pre-crypto, community blogging adventures: the thinking of people, the empathizing with people, the missing of people, the living their life through their stories.
https://steemitimages.com/640x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmRm9rQyd2ihWz5kn7KfEib2NMH17sMizFbrCiaGEswKhD/DSC_9783_copyright_rosanne-dubbeld.jpg [Photo first published here]
I was about 16 years old and these two 'online people' I read blogs of were going to get married that day. I wasn't a member of this blogging platform for that long, so I wasn't 'inner circle', yet, and therefore wasn't invited. But so many of our blogging platform were! All these people I knew only by nickname would gather that afternoon and celebrate a blogging community marriage.
We still had Dial-Up Internet access at home - when I was at school I could log onto my blog whenever I didn't have class - but at home I had to fight with my brother who played games on the one computer the whole family shared - and my mother sometimes wanted to make a phone call which back then meant I had to go offline ;-)
I hurried home that day, wanted to know 'if they said yes' (of course they did, it wasn't a tv drama after all), and most of all: see the pictures of these pixel persons I interacted with so much and guess who is who on the pictures. I made sure I had a good excuse so I could 'claim' the computer for the next hour, and quickly logged in on the website.
In the end I had to come back several times to actually see the pictures because everyone had the same 'connectivity' as I had and quick photo posting on Facebook and Instagram wasn't a thing yet.
This was only the beginning of what became an era of digital friendships turning into real-life memories. In the years to come some of those digital friends would would become fathers and mothers, would get sick, would die.
Things changed when Facebook got into our lives. People were hiding less and less behind nicknames and were even doing identity branding, on Twitter for example. People following people because their brand or story was so cool - but real interaction was lost, it wasn't a 'home' like it was on my blogging platform of a few hundred people.
We mostly interacted through lazy 'likes'.
It's the first thing I recognized when I signed up for Steemit (I didn't know how Steemit compared to Steem back then) at the end of 2017: real people making real connections. Steemians who are only sending, not interacting, often have a lesser status on this platform, as connections and relationships matter here, more than on what I now call 'old-skool social media'. I was relieved, I had missed it, and had gotten cynical and bored by the constant optimizations of self-image I had witnessed as compared to making connections on a pre-social-media blogging community.
But, it also means here too people I consider friends are getting sick, or are in need of some real life support otherwise. It was only a matter of time before here too I would have to hear we had lost a community member, in this case a Dutch language promotor and enthusiast @jackjohanneshemp. He died in the same week I was very concerned with the well-being of at least two other Steemians I care about. These stories and happening pretty much occupied my mind lately.
As bad as I am at keeping more than a handful of friends close to me in my offline life, on Steem it seems to be possible to make endless relationships. It's crazy how often I experience something off-Steem (it does happen) and I think of this Steemian or that Steemian. More and more of you are now in my phones' contact list and I chat with you on Telegram or Whatsapp, just quick life updates or exchanges of information.
I recently had a short e-mail exchange with one of the people I met on my 'old' blogging platform. He still sends me digital Christmas Cards every year. He's not doing so well. He's one of those people I met online who is still in my life.
It makes me wonder: who of you that I have met the past year will still be in my life 15 years from now?
Return from Who of you will still be in my life 15 years from now? to Rosanne's Web3 Blog
