url to irl
This part of The Old Man and the Screen's What even is bearblog? reads more like a challenge to me:
I write this for myself, I speak to you as you exist, but right now as I type this, it is just me and my screen, in one year it will still be just me and my screen, if you read it it will be just you and your screen at that time.
Spoilers: you’re reading “The Old Man and the Screen”!
I don’t care about you I care about what you say
And really, why would it be any other way?
I don’t know you, I will never know you and I don’t want to know you, and I’m expecting the same from you.
These questions came to mind:
- What if there's more to this than just me and my screen and just you and your screen?
- What if we could care not only about what each other says, but about each other?
- What if there's a chance that I want to know you, let alone could know you?
- What if any number of our presences transcended our screens together?
Consider how permeable the barrier between online and offline spaces can be. Plenty of people and scenes have transmuted URL interactions into as or more meaningful IRL ones via simple invites. What like minds, posting within or near your neighborhood, have you not yet linked up with? How about those in faraway places which you can or want to visit someday? What mutual flourishing is everyone missing out from by treating the potentially hyperconnective activity of public writing as just them and their screen?