Internet Colonists

I was reading reddit comments on various subjects when one of them posted about all of the changes in the internet since 2007. The iPhone and other smart devices allowed anyone to get onto the internet quickly. Facebook became the aggregator for most information. Youtube was bought out by Google, and people started to make money off of being internet famous. Twitter became a chance to talk about things quickly.

What the discussion became, was about how forums and BBS ideas were frowned on, and looked at in horror by these new groups. It almost felt like the Internet had colonists, and they were demanding everyone change the culture to their ideals.

It’s a weird thing to say, but I think its true. There are patterns for colonies, and how the natives respond to it. The first group that arrives is mostly men, and they tend to be less than moral about what they are doing. Then there are the places designated for colonists, and the natives. The colonists begin to bring in their wives and children, and suddenly a moral crisis happens. People demand the amoral behavior be stopped, and they blame the natives on it. Both groups are placed in a difficult position, do they continue the lines as they were, band together, or let one side dominate? The arguments happen, and slowly a new group of colonists arrive, and start the entire thing over again.

There are tons of records about colonies, and how they began. You think of the Pilgrims on the island of Manahata, and I think of Italians in Argentina. They all begin though with people travelling to the place, and trying to make a living.

There have been Muslims coming to the US since it was a bunch of French and British colonies. They don’t show up in history or politics because there were so few of them. They lived their lives, and were forgotten.

When the British began to place colonies in India, the first people were soldiers and traders. They did not have a very moral character about themselves. Long diaries about the women of the land, and how to seduce them were common.

A more blunt statement is that of the first major visit to the Hawaiian islands by a European noticed how venereal diseases from the ship had spread to other islands on the second visit. The men had slept around, and then noticed the people on boats could travel several miles away to nearby islands. In that order.

The first people to really arrive at a place for Chinese culture is vagabonds and traders. In the culture they are the same in position. A peasant has greater standing. So, they trade what they can, when they can, and often in ways that higher up Chinese would hate.

The Japanese referred to European traders as Hairy Sea Barbarians. You can guess what was thought about, and considered.

In other words, the first people are forgettable, but the large groups tend to be on the amoral side. They are not trying to gain any cultural understanding. At times they want dominance, and others they don’t care. Either way, expect to find out about how the women look, and less about the abilities of the culture.

The first major internet users were men. They traded information about stocks, lab results, and porn. Websites and Web Browsers were created around 1990. There were earlier things like BBS boards, but we will start here. The reason why is because I was there, and not so much for the others.

Websites were new, they could be made by a web browser, and most of the cool stuff would be a quick change in the html file. Netscape was so good, I regularly used it as a text editor instead of word or others. However, websites were insane.

I think the best story is when I was in highschool, checking out information on Chrono Trigger. The website with what I needed had ads, those ads were mostly porn. When my teacher asked what I was looking at, all she saw was the ads.

There was no adblock, or well designed virus checker. The ads, and way things worked made it difficult to not get porn. Honestly, while thinking about it, I am remembering Hermione’s comment in the first movie about being killed or worse, expelled. I had less fear of a virus than I did finding porn.

Web search engines did not give descriptions, just names. Whitehouse .com did not go to a government sanctioned website. Unless President Clinton was doing some stuff behind everyone’s back. The picture was of a naked woman on an american flag. You really didn’t know what the site was going to be like until after clicking the link.

FTP and other download connections would have names given, but they didn’t always end up being what you expected. The cool demo turned out to be something else.

You had to download any video or picture to really see it, so this meant guesswork as things loaded. It literally took minutes to load a full picture at times.

We can see this same feeling with many starting technologies. P2P systems that allowed pictures, sound files, and movies were rife with porn. It may be the Matrix, or it may be porn. You won’t know until you hit play.

The Hacker community itself did not care what a company said. The program or what have you is data. Data is the realm of computers, using a computer is free to all. Therefore, the data itself is free. It became a war by many companies to stop people from using these programs, music, and others. They didn’t beat the natives, but they won over the colonists.

As families began to move into the area, the new colonists demanded more structure and morality in their lives. The same men who were talking about the loveliness of the local women were now going home quickly. There were talks of moral values, and how those same lovely women were terrible things.

What you ended up with was basically a small colony area that the locals rarely went into, and the colonists rarely left. There was a wild wonderful world out there, and most of the society believed it was too dangerous to deal with.

Hawaii is basically like this today. There is Waikiki, and where everyone else lives. The Polynesian Cultural Center buses people in to it, but most locals pay the museum very little mind. I could set my watch to some of the acts, and heard the night show going when I walked home. I think I went in as a tourist a few times, but not many.

China had a small port that turned into a city. It took amazing engineering skill, and madness to create it, but the English were able to create a place for themselves. They had similar ports in India, where English women lived like queens, and demanded the people begin to follow society’s rule. Many of the same journals describing beautiful women, now had talks about games, and making sure the wife was taken care of.

On the other hand, the trade ports were rife with new things, and cultures mixing. The trade is what kept the people there, and they felt very rich.

For the internet, there was the bubble. People were buying up websites, and spending millions of dollars on the prospect of the world to come. Most parents bought nanny programs to protect their children from pornography. This was really useful because it would block websites for words, and words can have several different meanings. When I was looking up information on anacondas, I couldn’t get onto a biology website because it had the word sex.

Yahoo and others began to act as the gateway to the internet. They made magazines about cool websites, and what was trending at the time. You could order monthly CD’s with videos and information about new stuff, and they would have links to websites. There were promises for no porn, and active happy stuff. You could actually watch a video on a website, but it was easier to download it and watch it later.

As you can see, the world of print was still commanding the sphere, but new websites began to show up. The world we knew, the one with structure, and leaders was for the colonies. It looked and acted like the old world, the one we knew.

Outside of that was Napster, internet gaming, and random books you couldn’t find any other way. Because of how the internet worked, I didn’t know if I could find a website again. It was easier to print everything off, and then look at it. My sister actually had a sick day, and I printed off pictures of various videogames for her to enjoy. I found various books on explosions, printed them out, and showed them to my physics teacher. We may have had some fun trying out the ideas.

This essay is not about domination theory, so look that up later. However, things do change, and it can follow those patterns. The problem is that the power is different depending on where you are in the colonial area. Domination may be the settlers, but only in their cities. Outside of that is land run by the natives, who do not take kindly to someone telling them what to do. Often we forget this dynamic, and especially how the dominance could change quickly.

But these struggles for who has what power cause a problem to occur, and trade falters. A disaster happens, and suddenly the local and the colonist are pushed together in new ways.

In Japan, trade was suddenly opened up because the Shogunate was broke. They couldn’t continue to rule, because the tradesmen had taken their money. When Colonel Perry arrived, it was a relief for everyone to find a new thing, that combined both cultures.

China closed their borders on England, but Hong Kong continued to flourish. At the same time, Chinese workers began appearing in cities all over the Pacific. This meant an introduction to new ideas, and foods. The foods were changed to appeal to a more American or local desire.

The colonists in India were left on their own, because India was simply there for better trade with China. This meant the British had an army, but most of them were broke. To build better ties with the country, faster cultural trade happened.

Hawaii had a power change, and suddenly local Hawaiians were now part of the peasant class. Many others came to work in the fields. They barely had any food, and combined their cultures to create a new thing. Spam Musubi, or Moco Loco are several cultures dashed together to make something quite tasty. In fact, we now have three cultures in Hawaii today. There is Native Hawaiian, Local, and Tourist.

The Internet bubble burst, then we had wars, and school shooters. They all had used the internet somehow. This alarming time meant many of the people on the internet left, or stayed in small websites. Yahoo became a colony on its own, and could control your opinions on things. Web Browsers had add ons to help you search, check your mail, and other things. People did not want to explore this brand new world as much.

Those who did found a way to combine the cultures they loved, with the internet. Emerging cultures like videogames, and geekdom used the internet as a bastion. Online games like World of Warcraft took people away from the world, and to a new one.

That sounds really cool, but many of the websites from the internet bubble had to do something to stay around. Some of them used porn. IGN had an entire section on men, and offered up special pictures of scantily clad women if you paid a monthly price. The coverage of events like E3 were about games, but to promote them, companies hired women to dress in very little and let their picture be taken next to a game. It was dumb, but it worked.

Ads began to appear in over the top ways. I think the one I hated the most was the Planet of the Apes reboot. It had tabs had been introduced to Firefox, and the ad still played as you were looking at something else. An ape would walk along the screen, and then roar. The roar would shake the screen. You didn’t realize this would happen until the screen was shaking with a roaring sound. It was very annoying.

Companies tried fighting back against the new trends, and changes around them. Websites were still more like magazines, only updated more. My personal favorite writer during this time was Dave Kosak of GameSpy. There were lawsuits against people for downloading movies. Several attempts at laws were passed to stop it, but the government had little control over the world of the internet.

At this same time, Youtube began to show up. It wasn’t someone else’s thing, it was open to anyone. All sorts of amazing things could be found on the site, made by absolute nobodies. They made videos about English, like the Dictionary of Jack, or some random video that was originally on newgrounds.

Picture sites began to be big. The Japanese had sites dedicated more to sharing pictures, than getting to know people. The Infamous 4Chan came from it, and created a new culture. Between sites like Something Awful, and 4Chan, the internet had memes. Terms were created, and even came into the old world.

MySpace made a new colony, and dominated. That was actually a really scary site. I played a game called, “Is it the police, is it an idiot, or is it a predator?” Bascially, people had multiple accounts, and some of them were posting alluring photos of underage girls. Some of the posters really were those girls. Others were the police trying to catch predators. Then we had predators, pretending to be girls so they could get more pictures.

The new world did not have borders, and you could go from the colonial area of Yahoo, to the far off world of 4Chan with ease.

As these cultures begin to make their new identity, new colonists arrive. They view everyone from the original groups as the same. To them, this world has always been this way. They make their own colonial area, and claim to speak these new languages. Some of them succeed, while others do not.

In Hawaii, I learned Pidgin so I could talk to my neighbors. We spoke perfect english at school, and Pidgin with our friends. Everyone spoke it, my boss, my friends, even my teachers. I was a colonist though, my school was the new colony for students. The locals didn’t like this, because they viewed the school as theirs. Not everyone acted this way, but I was warned about it several times. This is the other reason why I spoke Pidgin, if I sounded local, I may not be screwed up as a colonist or tourist. I met people that lived a few towns over, and they knew nothing about the town I lived in. When I asked them how long they had been on the island, some of them had been their for decades.

A real problem with refugees is the belief we can take them on. The truth is there aren’t a lot of people who work to help these people adapt to the new culture, and keep their old one. If a very large group moved in, it would be impossible to help them all with adapting. It would be a new colonialism. No one wants that, because of all the problems it would cause. I know of cities that didn’t help people adapt enough, and now the police simply don’t go into those areas. It doesn’t matter what the ethnicity or local group is, it all looks like this.

Apple created devices for people to download music, movies, and check the internet as they go. They were almost entirely new to the world. Apps could be simple games, and many companies made millions, and even billions selling these games.

Sites like facebook made apps that allowed people to connect, chat, and other stuff easily. In fact, you could specifically say you didn’t want this subject or that subject. Pinterest let people look at pictures, and not talk to a single person. Instagram let everyone become photographers.

With the ability to send information instantly to everyone, the celebrities of the old world tried to act like they were part of this new one. They got onto Twitter, they posted pictures from their facebook page, and made sure there were very nicely photoshopped pics of themselves on instagram.

One of the biggest things was the ability to block ads. It doesn’t matter what site there is, you can block those freaking ads. The only way a company gets money, is if you choose to give it to them. With hundreds of millions of people online, it means anyone can give you money.

The new world and its colonists were mostly people who didn’t get online often. They heard about things, or read about stuff, but never knew a lot of fans of it. With Netflix and others, people could actually become those same fans. I had a weird moment when I was watching some old Doctor Who episodes, and recognized them from when I was a kid. I used to call him Sherlock Holmes in Time and Space. Hulu let me watch every single episode. Those I couldn’t get were on other sites. I really could watch to my heart’s content.

Honestly, I enjoy this new colony, because the only way someone finds porn, is by specifically looking for it. There may be the odd moment on deviantart, or pinterest, but it can be fixable.

It was a brave new world for these colonists, and also odd for the old locals. Doing things like post pictures of poop for the heck of it annoyed these colonists. The colonists demanded new rules, and people follow their ideas. They were fans of these shows, or these ideas.

It came to a point where names were being called, and new terms for the locals began to be called. Neckbeard, Chauvinist, troll. Were some of them like this? Oh yes, they were specifically doing things to get a rise out of the colonists. Videogames got very dark for a while, and didn’t let up. The colonists looked at the world, and claimed it as their own, without realizing who had been their before hand.

The problem with this idea was that the locals knew how to fight in this world. You could create tons of articles, and hand wringing from the colonists, but the truth was the locals were the ones who could screen capture, post memes against ideas, and others. The colonists thought they could fight the old ways, and found themselves completely shocked when the locals simply didn’t follow.

This is where we are now. The new colonists don’t realize they are in a land that has been colonized several times. We had gone from BBS to websites to phones. We have had computers the size of rooms to the size of your hand. Each step has had new colonists, new ideas, and new ways to do things. Many of the locals have learned to adapt to this culture, or are accustomed to being crapped on for being in it.

The latest colonists don’t realize this. They are enjoying their colony, and are starting to work out what the culture around them is talking about. They tried to make new rules, and change the world to one they understand. The first meme war was not a win, and many of the colonists are telling people to beware the locals. You have to learn the language, and how it works, or they might send you a picture of poop.

Meanwhile, I am off in a forum, chatting with a buddy about terrible ideas for an ice cream flavor. It’s weird being a native, but I guess I have to accept it.