gravesmistake314

[gravesmistake314]

Past Eden

On this day, we were sitting by the fire. You grew up with the world at your fingertips at a younger age than I. You had access to videos of dense canopies of the rainforest, the flowing deserts of the Middle East, and cloudy valleys where the sun’s light fell like our curtains in the drafty wind. You were bored of it, I could tell. I get why; it’s great and all, but it doesn’t beat the pastime…

[gravesmistake314]

Past Eden

On this day, we were sitting by the fire. You grew up with the world at your fingertips at a younger age than I. You had access to videos of dense canopies of the rainforest, the flowing deserts of the Middle East, and cloudy valleys where the sun's light fell like our curtains in the drafty wind.  You were bored of it, I could tell. I get why; it’s great and all, but it doesn’t beat the pastime of watching you name all the animals you see. You could throw off a wise man like me a few times when you ask me to say the names for you, despite the fact that you already knew all their pronunciations. 

It’s a miracle, the wonder in your eye, innocent as can be. You don’t know the dangers that can lurk in these places. You can have all you want here. I can make you your favorite meal, waffles with sprinkles on the left side only. Yet you open up Pandora's cupboard for my hard cider; you wanted to be like me, you said. It wasn’t your fault. Your sister told you to do it, and her toy snake told her to do it. 

You’re an adventurer, a dreamer, a leader. You lead your friends to far-off lands in the park, an amalgam of the harshest lava, coldest ice, and boundless space. It’s never anything peaceful like a land made of pillows or a world of peace. No, it’s always a war, and you valiantly lead your friends to glory against monsters you can’t see with your eyes but with your heart and soul.

That's why it made the question you asked me right now so hard. You wanted to know what the past was like. “How do I explain it to you?” I thought. I’m not as ancient as I look, it may seem long to you, but I’m no more of a child than you. I didn’t experience the World Wars, the Renaissance, or the invention of the wheel. I know you know there have been many worlds on this earth, the Archean, Proterozoic, Paleozoic, Mesozoic, and our Cenozoic, all of which you have babbled like a madman in the street. Just as dirty as one, but thankfully far cuter. 

I only experienced this century, this millennium. I was too young to remember the towers falling when everything supposedly changed. I don’t think I’ll fully know what that means, but I remember change. In what felt like an eternity of a year, but now feels like a blink of an eye. Phones went from clunks of plastic on the wall to flip phones that could handle water to iPhones that couldn’t. 

Everyone began using their phones to access the World Wide Web. Something we thankfully restricted from your tablet. It was rough at the start, but then it got so much quicker, so much faster. It was all so clear, resolute, streamlined, and easy for your grandparents to understand. But what was a new world in their hands was my playground. It was an underground carnival. Like you, I was an adventurer; I found the World Wide Web on my computer in the late 2000s. Not long enough to remember the agony of dial-up or the boogeyman known as Clippy, but I remember the Wild West. So that’s what I told you.

I told you about the forums and websites I used to browse: Ifunny, Tumblr, 4chan, SomethingAwful. You named it, I was there. I never typed; I wasn’t that good of a speller yet. I remember the memes that would burn for years, unlike the sparks of current ones. I remembered stories of people working together to challenge authority, like celebrities, cartels, and cults, using nothing but their wit. You were just as shocked as I was when I told you about the time 4Chan found a flag using nothing but plane chemtrails.

It was a place of anarchy. Men and women challenged each other in chess matches of the outlandish. Where it becomes apparent that genius really is the sum of intelligence and insanity, I couldn’t explain this to you; how could I? Where would I even begin? How do I explain the depraved like Chris Chan or any other gooner? The anger of incels and critics who cling and shake on the gates they keep till their arms break out of sockets and shoot up the real world. The shock of watching a man getting beheaded, two women with a cup, or a pony in a jar, all just a click away. You couldn’t do anything but chuckle at it. Just to keep it at your computer screen. 

I could lie and scare you, tell you these horrors are like Slendermen and that they were secure, contained, and protected. But even I know that isn’t true. I’ve been to the covens of the web, its monasteries, and templeOS. I’ve experienced the spirit of the other world, that is, the web. I know that in this astral plane, its monsters can breach liminal spaces, go through the back room, and escape the miniature samsara without attachments. The dimensions have merged, and we are in the Aion of Aquarius.

So I told you a different lie, a far more devious one. I told you of the golden age of pirates and devotion. I told you of my travels across the digital sea to find videos of movies of other worlds locked away behind stingy men. I told you how you had to find them in three, like a puzzle, but you ended up finding more doubloons than you could find on the TV once a week. I told you how you could find any song you want and see people make their own music for the media that they loved. I told you of multiplayer lobbies and LAN parties, making far more new friends than you could at the park. 

I told you of all the good things taken for granted. It was more generic than the bad, but to you, it was grandiose. Its absence had made it stronger. I described it as a magical, majestic place. I had made a Library of Alexandria and its port in the Pirates Bay out to be an Akashic Record containing all the knowledge in the world, no matter how silly it was.

Despite hiding the shadow, the light you reflected back made me smile. I can’t help but lie to you, seeing your eyes glow so bright with awe and wonder as you reflect on all the splendor I told you. You are trying to get the cat to play piano and asking your sister to bite your finger. It’s clear its grandiosity became as incomprehensible as the horrors I am afraid of you seeing. Perhaps it was best I made the community of the internet, like the furries, out to be animal brides instead of Skinwalkers. 

I am unsure, though, you are now browsing the web on my Apple phone, looking for the old internet, like the past is just something out of reach. You’re reaching so far for the paradise of the past that you don’t realize you’re going to fall from it. You devote yourself to this idea; you reflect what I told you. You try to make animated music videos with music that you pretend to pirate from my CD case but end up making a YouTube poop instead. 

You try to explore forums in the past, I thank god in all their mercy that you can not read yet. You would realize that you are naked, a hedgehog with no quills. You do not know good and evil, the difference between a heartfelt truth and an empty lie. You only know the lie I told you, and you filled it with so much care. You made it a truth, you strived to make it real, and you strived to be a digital explorer. 

At that moment, I experienced something new: a feeling of hope and terror. I feel it like a bubble that bobbles between my throat and my heart. There is no dread in this feeling, though it is a perfect time to feel it as I ponder you. Will you become a paragon of this past in your mind? What will you manifest from this concept? What virtues will you take from it as you grow into a man? How will you deal with the strife when you find out about what I have had to hide from you? Will you look the truth in the eye or turn your head in ignorance? Will this lie empower you or defeat you my only son? 

I don’t want this lie to go too far, but I can see it in your eyes. I lit the fire of your soul, and it would be cruel to douse it. I have expelled you from Eden, and for that, I’m so sorry. I know you will learn so much to make this ideal a reality by embodying it and giving it power no different than a shaman with a god or spirit. In searching for El Dorado, I hope you are not too disappointed when you find the city of gold is merely pyrite. I fear that you will not accept this or learn from the hubris of men in my time and try to make your heaven on earth. 

Your heaven is within, and it will be a part of you. I hope you learn this, and I hope you piece together that I have tricked you. That you don’t lament being kicked out of Eden because you haven’t truly been kicked out. There may be no paradise on earth, every place will have its flaws, but there is a sense of paradise in this moment. Of me telling you about before, and I hope one day you’ll come back to this old wooden chair and tell your own children about your past, enlightened by lessons learned in your rose-colored memory.

[gravesmistake314]

internet friends are kinda like illegally downloaded friends. you don’t get the physical copy but you still get all the great content

[gravesmistake314]

One of my predictions for DC Absolute comic series is that Nightwing is going to be a Talon for the Court of Owls. What are some fan theories that you have?

[gravesmistake314]

It’s alarming how accurate this is.

"Wow! I love planning the book I'm writi-" kill the 12 year old. "What?" KILL THE 12 YEAR OLD

[gravesmistake314]

Brain: Hey buddy you should write a Yu Gi Oh fanfic that addresses other games like in the original manga. It would be a fantastic commentary on the monozation of culture and how people’s worth in society are determined by a few factors of their vast experience.

Me: It’s 1 AM…

[gravesmistake314]

One thing I have noticed recently when it comes to the current state of American politics is that you really need to have a deep understanding of internet culture in order for any of it to seem comprehensible. I am the only person in my family who is really engaged in internet culture, and just talking about things that Donald Trump is saying online, like Joe Biden being a clone, sounds absolutely crazy. Like I am pretty sure some of my family think I am a nutcase cause I try to give online context on whats going on politically, and it's so absurd that there is no way anyone who doesn't engage on the internet would believe it.

I don't even give my own takes, I just repeat what is being said and show sources or give historical context. I almost don't blame them for having cognitive dissonance if I were in their shoes, and I quoted Donald Trump or his cronies when my only frame of reference is excerpts on the news that have to sanitize it for an audience of normies, I too wouldn't believe it. Not to mention the fact that the internet is a vast place, so even in other corners of the online space, it must all seem like babble.

For example, my grandma and I occasionally engage in politics. Now she is a republican, and I am thankful she's been very accepting of my neurodivergence and friends who are a part of the LGBTQ+ space. I recently talked to her about my research paper on GamerGate, and I brought up how Donald Trump's 2016 election was, in part, a result of GamerGate and online discourse. I was very clear on the process, and she was able to understand it, but then she went back to watching FOX news, and they were talking about how woke is bad, and to her, they were completely separate in her mind. Same with Elon Musk in what I say and show (with proof), and to her it's almost like the one on the news and the internet are separate people, because when I bring up what he named his son, how he runs Twitter, plans for the public transit system, etc. She can not believe it is Elon cause she can not comprehend what someone would say and do those things confidently.

It's like light outside of the visible spectrum. It's so asinine that she or anyone not a part of online culture hears what politicians are openly saying online. They just can't see it because it makes no logical sense. When we as a species find something that doesn't make logical sense, we tend to just ignore it. Which unfortunately, works in politicians' favor as those who try to explain it seem dumber than them for making the attempt. I think that's why so many people don't use the internet to engage in politics, and the ones that do already have a screw loose.

[gravesmistake314]

This would be funny if it were not true. I can’t tell you how many times as a history major I see someone talk about something common in the past like they just invented the wheel.

Just because you don’t remember anything past the 50’s doesn’t mean that the 50’s are the standard. Same goes for any other point in history. Time and culture are fluid and the point of studying history is not to preserve are view of normal but recover what we have forgotten.

[gravesmistake314]

"The gap between high-functioning and low-functioning Autistic people is too wide. This is why they need to be two separate diagnoses."

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

There is no gap, there are people there.

THERE IS NO GAP, THERE ARE PEOPLE THERE!

MSN Autistic people exist. Separating the spectrum is to leave us behind. Stop forgetting about us.

[gravesmistake314]

Generous African Grey Parrot Shares Food Tokens With Another Parrot So They Can Both ‘Buy’ Walnut Treats

[gravesmistake314]

Seriously some of the paragon options would totally be seen as forcing left politics. There are small moments where the writing can be self serving. Which I can totally see people take out of context and claim it’s millennial writing. Stanley Woo from what I know about him and his reputation on forums easily could have been a straw man for GamerGate. Honestly I think what stopped it from being a target outside of age was the fact that BioWare was still being mocked over the TORtanic.

I’m positive that if Mass Effect came out like 10 years later it would be labeled as woke or bad by people who haven’t played it.

[gravesmistake314]

I’m positive that if Mass Effect came out like 10 years later it would be labeled as woke or bad by people who haven’t played it.

[gravesmistake314]

I get so many ideas when cutting grass that it’s almost worth the risk of loosing my food just to right them down.

[gravesmistake314]

Furries can either be some of the most rational and coolest people you can meet or completely insane. There is no in between.

happy 2 year anniversary to this exchange

[gravesmistake314]

Don’t get me wrong shipping is fun and I don’t think people should stop shipping. However everyone needs to be able to view media in a different lens from time to time.

you gotta learn to take the shipping goggles off or they will rot your brain

[gravesmistake314]

This is really cool. I might use some of the designs for inspiration on a mermaid story I have on the back burner.

Mermay 1-10 by Christophe Young

[gravesmistake314]