Fun

You know what? I miss being fun.

I used to be fun on the internet. I used to have no problem with letting my silly come out to play, and often for extended periods of time.

At one point I was able to respond to a question about what a one-person ping pong game was like with silliness like (and this is a direct quote) Kind of like the sound of one hand clapping... except with more ping... without feeling like rolling my eyes the next day.

Or maybe I felt like rolling my eyes, but in the end it didn't matter because it was all in fun.

I should explain the nostalgia, I guess. Something in my tracking mail led me to an old, old thread on a forum I help moderate, and that led me to another old thread, and that... well, led me to waste enough time reading old threads that now I really should be getting some lunch rather than blathering. This'll be brief, then.

Where I would normally end up after a long ramble is that I miss the person who actually took an active part in internet communities rather than lurking, which is what I do most of the time now. How the lurking started is something I'm really not sure about. We change over time, of course. Our interests change, our focuses change. It could be just that, or it could be the something to do with the way that internet communities seem to get so repetitive -- like there's only so many topics in the world or something. After a while a person gets tired of seeing conversations enter the exact same spirals, maybe.

Whatever it was, somewhere along the line I dropped out. I still moderate (although many people might be surprised to hear that since I've turned myself fairly invisible). I belong to a couple of other communities where I find myself an interested spectator more than anything.

But I'm really beginning to miss playing. I've spent far too much time guarding the gatorade on the sidelines, I think.

Changing a long-time habit isn't so easy, though. To beat the sports metaphor to death, maybe I'm too out of shape to be subbed in by now.

I don't know.

But if anyone out there can remind me how to be constructively silly or at least a little bit fun again, internettally speaking, feel free to drop some hints.

Lunch now.