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I Believe In the Fediverse

In 2022, tech magnate and bombastic personality Elon Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion, thumbing the scales of an already polarized social media website further toward censorship, misinformation and ideological warfare. Twitter once was—and arguably still is—the closest thing to an open forum on the internet with widespread participation among people of all social status, from A-list celebrities to run-of-the-mill crackpots. While this may be true, it hasn't stopped millions of people from completely abandoning the site as the quality of the user experience continues to degrade beyond our wildest imaginations.

The critical weakness of Twitter was exposed during the aftermath of this multi-billion dollar transaction: a forum cannot actually be open when it is owned and operated by a central authority with a transparent political agenda. Much digital ink has been spilled over when exactly Twitter was ruined, but it's hard to deny that it got there. People have begun to understand the need for an alternative, seeking it out in new and familiar destinations alike.

The new social web, in many ways, looks like the old social web. The kinds of people who were on Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat and Vine in the early 2010s are likely spending more time on Instagram, TikTok, Threads and Bluesky in the mid-2020s. We're still tapping out ten-second, hundred-character ephemera into our pocket rectangles, the parameters have just shifted slightly. While I'm glad to see people recognize the need to cut ties with a burgeoning hotbed of reactionary ideology in the case of Twitter, I worry that many have not learned the correct lessons from this saga and are setting themselves up to repeat the same mistakes.

As we continue down a path toward tech oligopoly and unfettered transfer of wealth to the upper echelons of society, it should be clear that another centralized, corporate platform cannot be the key cornerstone of a free and open internet. An alternative will always be necessary when the entire infrastructure of a communication service can be acquired with a cash transfer. Enter Mastodon: an open-source, decentralized Twitter equivalent that could be a viable solution to this growing problem.

Mastodon is part of a vast social networking platform known as the fediverse. This platform makes use of the ActivityPub protocol, a framework for seamless communication between various interlinked, disparate services. In practice, a Mastodon user can see content and interact with profiles from all over the fediverse, well beyond anything that exists under the Mastodon umbrella. Fediverse servers (referred to as “instances”) are comparable to email servers, hosted by different kinds of people from around the globe and able to communicate with each other by design.

The fediverse is as much a part of the small web as your personal website or blog. Its utility in your life is as shallow or deep as you want; your experience will be the priority every step of the way. Fediverse services are never going to harvest your data, advertise to you or psychologically manipulate you into scrolling further—they only seek to connect you with other fediverse users. The fediverse is also literally a “small web” in the grand scheme of social media. Mastodon only has about 7,000,000 users, around half of the total Bluesky userbase and about thirty times smaller than the population on Meta's Threads app.

Threads is technically part of this federated network, though its users currently cannot follow or see replies from other fedizens, demonstrating Meta's lack of good faith commitment to the concept. Bluesky is another popular refuge for Twitter expats, developed on a similar protocol to ActivityPub. The Authenticated Transfer protocol is not linked to the fediverse or any other service outside of Bluesky, suggesting this for-profit service's touted openness could end up being more style than substance. It's possible to bridge profiles between Mastodon and Bluesky using hacky third-party methods, but this is not quite the same as the intercommunicability you'd find between fediverse instances.

Most people are not thinking too deeply about the technical minutiae, they simply go where other people are. Once you get used to a certain place, it's difficult to see the point of spending time anywhere else. Enmeshing yourself in any given service will eventually expose you to its limitations, there might be ways around them but you're going to be aware of them regardless. There's a certain Stockholm syndrome-like quality to social media partisanship; I can't confidently say I've been above it in all my years of using the internet.

I've always been fascinated with the abundance of social media apps that all end up doing the same thing. If social media is supposed to be a place on the web to share shortform text, pictures, video and audio clips, why do we need so many places to do it? At a certain point after uploading videos to Twitter, posting a Notes app essay on Instagram or publishing an animated photo album reel on YouTube, how have we not discovered that this is all the same?

The beauty of the fediverse is a distinct recognition of this fact; the entire utility of social media has been flattened into one logical, streamlined plane of deployment. The services that make up the fediverse aren't deadlocked in competition, instead collaborating with each other to popularize the ActivityPub standard. Rather than being driven by market forces that funnel development efforts toward unwanted features, fediverse apps endeavor to provide the best possible experience for their intended use cases and nothing more.

Mastodon is the premier service, it's practically synonymous with the fediverse among the uninitiated. There are also several other federated Mastodon-likes offering comparable features and exclusive benefits, such as Misskey, Sharkey, Friendica and Pleroma. Pixelfed is the designated Instagram replacement, about as straightforward as it gets. A TikTok competitor called Loops was also recently made available by the Pixelfed developers. Peertube remains criminally underutilized as people clamor for a viable YouTube alternative, though it can be challenging to find a suitable instance. Lemmy successfully gained a foothold among disillusioned Reddit users, but it's still too niche to be useful for certain interests due to lack of engagement. WriteFreely is a solid, if bare-bones choice for blogging in my experience, seemingly lacking functionality offered by other free services.

The fediverse as it exists today is clearly a mixed bag. It's nice that all of these services can talk to each other, but the practical application of this is questionable at best from my vantage point. Further buy-in is required from wealthy, technically-skilled people to keep the project sustainable. Prominent instances that serve a specific niche on the fediverse like botsin.space are forced to shut down due to lack of support, exposing a weakness of this concept and demonstrating why it might not actually be the one-size-fits-all solution needed to fix social media altogether.

It's been a great service for my specific interests as a tech blogger, but I worry the evangelists can't see past their nose when it comes to clarifying the benefits of joining for other kinds of people. The sign up process is notoriously confusing for those who are more familiar with conventional social media. The actual usability of fediverse apps is almost never a clear upgrade over their mainstream counterparts. We've reached a point with computing—and every experience downstream from it—where the focus has shifted away from providing a quality product and more toward extracting value out of those who are too dug in to learn a new way of doing things. The alternatives don't currently have the infrastructure or cultural cachet to compete, requiring more effort and compromise than the average person may be interested in.

All I can do is share bits of personal experience in hopes that it resonates with people. I've enjoyed my time on the fediverse, but I'm just not as deep into it as other folks. While I think it would be a fun project to start my own instance from home, I don't exactly have the time, money, housing continuity and technical competence to get it done right away. Still, the act of remaining on a large general-purpose instance like mastodon.social does not make me less of a fediverse user in the same way that relying on a desktop environment does not make me less of a Linux user—yes, it's true.

I decided to join Mastodon in the summer of 2023 when I became fed up with the direction of Twitter under its new leadership. By this point, Twitter had become more of a news tool than a social media site for my uses. I was drowning in a sea of voices; nothing I shared had any amount of penetration, and the mutual acquaintances I once kept up with grew distant or dropped off completely. I chose mastodon.social because it seemed like the most logical starting point for getting into an ecosystem I knew practically nothing about.

It took a period of months to start coalescing around like-minded individuals on Mastodon. Posting in several hashtags, monitoring the various timelines, filtering out obnoxious keywords and vigilantly muting obviously fake, spam-ridden and low quality accounts worked wonders for discovering people. I can proudly say I've made more genuine connections on Mastodon in under two years then I ever did on that Twitter account I made in 2009. Though I may not have the energy to post multiple times a day, every day, I'm likely to get something out of it when I do.

I believe in the fediverse as a Utopian concept for a social web unconstrained by corporate influence. I've been exposed to avant-garde ideas and artistic creations I wouldn't have encountered anywhere else. I've met some wonderful people who've encouraged me to be more creative, put myself out there, think in different ways and grow as an individual. There is a personal touch to the fediverse that can be difficult to describe. Fedizens appreciate your contributions in a way you won't find as easily in other communities focused on cultural narratives and clout chasing. It can be easy to forget how small Mastodon is when you're reaching an engaged audience without much barrier to entry.

That being said, it's important to recognize that the fediverse may never end up being a snug fit for everyone. It's not likely to win over anybody who is averse to using social media or those who struggle to find a healthy balance with online activities. While it's not as explicitly hierarchical and addicting-by-design as some of the other corporate services I briefly mentioned, the perverse incentive structures baked into the concept of social media are inextricably linked to fediverse apps as well. The ways that social apps shape our behavior are beyond the scope of this piece, but suffice to say, the fediverse won't likely be a panacea for anybody's social isolation or attention span issues. All the negative factors I've discussed add up to a potentially tough sell, hence why I don't normally extol the benefits of the fediverse to everyone I know.

The irony of this ambitious interlinked system of cooperative social media services ultimately having limited appeal beyond a thin slice of diehard enthusiasts is not lost on me, but at the same time, that lack of reach might actually be a good thing. The small web is experiencing a revival, in part because previous attempts to create a central location on the internet for every kind of person to mingle have mostly proven to be a failure, a net negative for society at large. The internet was always better when there were degrees of separation between demographics—the evolution of the new social web is bearing this out. It would be great if humans could get together, sing Kum Ba Yah and find ways to appreciate each others' differences, but that's simply not the world we live in. Until that day comes, I'll keep sharing periodical musings with the handful of people in my circle over here.

(Originally published in Ctrl-ZINE Issue #17: https://ctrl-c.club/~/loghead/zine/Ctrl-ZINE.issue.17.pdf)

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Finding Community Behind the Screen

September 22, 2024

I.

I live in a small town of approximately 1,000 population not far from one of the five largest cities inside a midwestern United State. The county that encompasses this general area is typically shaded blue on an election map, though you wouldn't know it unless you're one of the 100,000 people who live within a five mile radius of the downtown area. I used to be one of those people, long ago in a time I can barely remember anymore.

I like to think I've changed a lot as a person since I moved to a rural area over a decade ago. At the same time, I've not exactly metamorphosed into what you might conceive of as a typical rural American. I enjoy watching sports, drinking beer and experiencing the great outdoors, but that's likely where the surface comparisons end. I spend other parts of my free time on hobbies that some might consider to be quirky, such as tinkering with ancient computers and playing European board games.

Beyond that, I choose not to participate in whatever remains of the monoculture in this pocket of middle American society—potentially to the detriment of a social life I could be having. I don't watch the Yellowstone television show. I don't listen to twangy country ballads. I don't eat choice cuts from the meat market. I don't have the ubiquitous social media app installed on my phone. I don't display signs for the expected political candidate in my yard.

I come from a relatively progressive, educated background. Most people from that bygone era of my life moved to large urban centers to pursue lucrative careers. Others stuck around the area I grew up in, but I don't know of a solitary soul who took the same path as me, deciding to set up shop further down the population pecking order.

Regardless of how I ended up here, this is where I've lived out my adult years up to this point. I've made an effort to serve various roles in the local community when the opportunity presents itself. I've managed to find a few friends in town and a short drive away.

Despite this, I've resigned myself to the fact that I will most likely never build a community of my own in this place. Even if I was financially stable enough to buy property and start a family, I'm not sure I would choose to do so in an area where I don't feel like I truly belong. Until I'm able move on to a new chapter of life, the only place left to turn is online.

II.

When I was in middle school, I attended a seminar about online safety between the designated lunch period and the first class of the afternoon block. I would usually get involved with anything related to computers or technology at school, even if I didn't have much of a choice when it came to this particular event.

During the meeting, the importance of staying anonymous on the internet was drilled into the heads of each attendee lest some cartoonish hacker stalk us from a distance on the computer. This was a reflection of contemporary internet safety guidelines agreed upon by people who may not have fully understood the scale of the issue they were trying to grapple with. The whole thing still seemed fairly reasonable to this adolescent version of myself, despite the histrionics associated with it.

All of a sudden, almost overnight, a switch was flipped. Word of a popular new social website spread like wildfire from the mouths of each of my classmates, even those I had not originally pictured as technologically forward. Everyone decided it was actually fine to pour their life's story into an online database and share it with anybody who cared enough to click on their profile.

I resisted for a while, eventually giving in after an onslaught of peer pressure. In hindsight, it's not so difficult to see the appeal of a centralized repository where inside jokes, funny photos and secret messages could be stored for quick access. It wouldn't be much longer before the newfangled omnipresence of smartphones made the experience even more seamless. The online world, a place that felt like an imaginary oasis separate from tangible reality, was now a compelling way to enhance real life social activity rather than strictly be a refuge from it.

It wasn't as if the social web was an entirely foreign concept to me. I had previously found enjoyment in Myspace during a period of time in which I was starting to get a feel for what the internet had to offer, at least at whatever speed my family's dial-up internet would allow. I appreciated the ability to customize nearly all elements of the profile page on Myspace, the social aspect was almost secondary to the self-expression. I also shared private chats with close friends through AOL Instant Messenger, a quick and easy way to jump into conversation or get a feel for what somebody was thinking without needing to tie up the phone line at home.

The casual, low pressure environment of text chats and web forums made me feel comfortable, confident, able to express myself more fully and directly. There was also something transgressive about the whole experience compared to more traditional methods of after-school communication. Formulating clever inside jokes and vulgar one-ups out of parental earshot didn't feel like it should have been possible in this way, and yet, we were doing it.

In contrast to what came before, the new place everybody was flocking to felt sanitized and lackluster. It seemed like less of a novel idea for a social media site than an amalgamation of several different online services that preceded it, featuring a low barrier of entry that catered more toward a general audience at the expense of the technically minded.

There were some thoughtful features unique to the service that helped it achieve mass appeal in such a short amount of time, but it felt like something was missing. The exploratory nature and excitement of not knowing what the next thing would look like were gone; people actually seemed to prefer it this way. The act of tying real-world identities to each profile page curtailed conversational idiosyncrasies usually enabled by anonymity and opened up unforeseen avenues for interpersonal conflict.

If you've been paying attention, you know what happens next. The wide adoption of Facebook was only the beginning of a tectonic shift in the way people used the internet, the way people conceived of human communication and processed information altogether.

III.

I don't think many people could have predicted how the internet would change the world. Around when it began a slow uphill crawl toward mainstream relevance, news stories claimed that it was a short-term fad. Columnists theorized that most people would never take interest in using it as a primary method of reading news, doing research for school or collaborating on work projects. The guy on the street viewed it as a source of crude entertainment rather than an earth-shattering technological innovation that would radically transform our entire sociological playing field.

In any case, if you've managed to come across this blog post, I'm guessing you have a pretty solid grasp of the dynamics surrounding the modern social web as well as a general idea for how things got to this point. Existing online in any capacity nearly precludes one's ability to avoid reliance on at least one of these pervasive mega-services. They've succeeded in positioning themselves as household names among the less technologically inclined, and in some cases, have become necessary to function in one's career or personal life.

It's now an undeniable fact that data is the most valuable commodity in the world. From the push and pull of shoving advertisements in people's faces to the various ways nefarious actors of different stripes engage in mass surveillance, the modern human is clearly more tracked, documented and profiled than at any other point in history. Products and services that once existed on their own now require you to accept permissions on a mobile app or sign up for an online account just so somebody out there can find yet another angle to harvest more of your personal data.

It's possible to minimize the amount of data extraction that your identity undergoes in the same way it's possible to avert your gaze from the screen and participate more fully in our shared flesh and blood reality. The problem we've run into is the psychological stranglehold that technology now has on everyday people. The most successful tech companies design their devices, software and web presence in ways that ensure the most effective manipulation of their user base. You see this play out in gaming, news sources, online shopping and yes, social media.

Some of these techniques involve twisting people's thought patterns and personality traits into distorted, unnatural shapes that serve one function: keeping them addicted to the screen. Dopamine feedback loops administered by the screen turn otherwise functional, productive members of society into unthinking drones or worse, dogmatic zealots. Consider the intensified political polarization caused by online media, an observable cultural phenomenon that continues to tear families and friendships apart.

The naked goal of modern technology is to position itself between people, acting as a middleman for all human relationships. People stare at their phones while riding the subway or sitting in waiting rooms at the doctor's office. People are more content to immerse themselves in endless screen time than picking up a hobby, learning a skill or putting themselves out into the world in a way that requires any amount of discomfort.

The screen fixation psychologically foisted upon us by the tech industry is very much about maximizing ad impressions, but it's also about control. It benefits big tech companies to create these invisible zones of control around people in part because these zones are an expression of the ultimate individualist fantasy. It is an all-encompassing vision for how humans should carry out their lives, one so vibrant that it blinds the rest of us to any alternative.

Instead of finding commonality with those in our circles, we're finding reasons to keep them outside of our box. Rather than seeing our fellow humans as equals worthy of coexistence, we see them as competitors, as greater or lesser than, and sometimes as undeserving wretches who deserve to be ground down by the system. A genuine link cannot be formed when nobody is content to simply be on the same footing as somebody else.

Hierarchy is an immutable force of nature, at least in the minds of powerful, influential and otherwise well-off people. What more is hierarchy than a numerical power level assigned to each individual bag of flesh and bones? There is an undeniable psychological component associated with large numbers; people love to have millions of dollars in the same way they love to have millions of followers on social media. It's only natural that social sites owned by people who fetishize imaginary numbers are designed from the ground up around the aggrandizement of the number.

From another perspective, one I personally find more sympathetic, it is this very hierarchy that creates alienation among people of all social status. Wealthy people who have all of their wants and needs met end up miserable because they are entirely removed from the creation of that wealth; they have no emotional ties to a world that exists largely for their benefit. Working class people are forced to compete with each other for a shrinking portion of available wealth, sowing distrust and breeding animosity among those who most closely align with each other's interests.

Even though people of all walks of life are more lonely and miserable than ever before, the power to make sweeping change in reaction to these feelings has been negated from the start. Those who are most equipped to dismantle hierarchy have the least motivation to do so, and vice-versa. This self-fulfilling prophecy acts as a cornerstone of all social structures in public life.

Social media is a manifestation of this framework, the 21st century frontier of our zero-sum existence. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, Reddit, Twitter and TikTok are noteworthy examples of these modern day wonders of the world, grandiose digital sculptures of incomprehensible detail erected as displays of corporate dominance over the general populace.

I didn't always hold this perspective. It took a long, winding pathway of life experience and contemplation to arrive at these conclusions. I used to be like everyone else. I accepted the way things were as an inevitability in the same way that I signed up for every new app people around me were talking about, because that's just what you did.

At one point, I had amassed one thousand friends on Facebook. The greatest lie I ever believed is that one thousand people were my friends.

IV.

Socializing requires some amount of compromise. You need to give away part of your time and energy to partake in conversations or activities you wouldn't have chosen to engage with on your own. On some level, we have to suppress our true nature if we want to be a part of other people's lives.

The internet has radically transformed this near universal understanding of human interaction. Now, you can squeeze out the bits that are relevant to your interests while ignoring paragraphs of fluff you don't believe are worth your time. You can join a niche cluster of people that share specific interests in a way that wouldn't be possible in the real world without some amount of organizing and travel.

Before the information superhighway was accessible to the public, monoculture spread through the many less advanced forms of mass media. You were living under a rock if you didn't know what was going on in the lives of famous celebrities and national politicians. Today, monoculture exists in both greater and lesser form, with disparate countercultural enclaves forming around it to satisfy every possible viewpoint. The grand narrative has been diluted through information overload, but in a paradoxical way, its influence has grown stronger than ever before. The internet has become a big box store of ideas, open 24 hours a day.

This gradual shift in cultural dynamics and the vectors through which information spreads is parallel with the way our lives in the here and now have been shaped. Human beings used to congregate out of necessity for their survival and communities formed from this shared material condition. Today, our ability to survive comes from fulfilling these impersonal societal roles where peers exist more as competitors than collaborators. Carving out something that approaches a decent life under the weight of the modern economy necessitates you moving further away from a familiar, natural place in the world.

Just as people convene in packed geographic areas to find a career, people also convene in fewer distinct places in the digital world for communication, entertainment and creative output. More time spent working to survive means less time for independent thought, for planning, for discovering new things. People feel captured by circumstance, afraid of risk because they are too enmeshed in what already is or left without something else to fall back on. The despair of this wrongheaded, compulsory existence as number counters and consumers of things leaves us depressed, ashamed, socially atomized and perhaps more to the point, pliant for the influence of the screen.

At risk of sounding like a low effort anti-social media image macro, I think we should consider the ways that online socializing makes us lonelier, more sheltered individuals. Losing perspective on what goes on around us while shaping our interests around unrelatable, niche topics can lead us down a patently destructive life path. Addiction to social media leaves us clinging to a rung on a towering hierarchical ladder with no end in sight.

Face-to-face interaction is not a source of infinite dopamine feedback, it's not supposed to have an innate numerical value associated with it. It can be messy, tedious and downright upsetting. It's also what we're supposed to be doing. We were lucky enough to be born with a higher intelligence, we should be using it to enrich our lives through shared experience.

While this all may be true, we have to acknowledge that the outside world can be a hostile place for people who are seeking connection. If you live in the United States, there's a chance that you find yourself living in a car-centric environment spread far away from others. The lack of population density and walkability in many parts of the country leaves people with few options to find a community they belong with in their local area.

Because of the previously discussed political environment, it's a guessing game if you will come across somebody you feel comfortable spending time with. Mainstream news media gins up raucous crowds of inconsiderate hatemongers who could never learn to appreciate the differences between people. If you're part of a marginalized group, how can you believe that your safety is a priority in the mind of a total stranger? Is it actually worth sacrificing your personal values to find common ground with somebody who isn't likely to do the same?

A society shaped around competition and exploitation is antithetical to community building. Mentally, financially, conversationally sound people have the luxury to form connections with others in the outside world without much effort. Disabled people, unhoused people, socially awkward people, people who have to work multiple jobs or people who can't afford the medication that keeps them sane are all at a clear disadvantage. Able-bodied, heteronormative people with disposable incomes don't often think about these problems because they don't affect them, some even look down upon those they see as losers and have-nots, so nothing is poised to change.

If you feel like you are alone in the world, you should sit with that feeling—don't just turn to escapism as your only salve. But, at the same time, I wouldn't blame you if you felt like escapism was your only option.

V.

As an adult, I've found text-based communication to still be an efficient, sometimes preferable method of expressing myself. I usually take a few moments to consider how to respond, a privilege that is almost never afforded in typical conversation. In a way, that's a central reason for why I decided to create this blog.

It might seem counterintuitive, then, that I didn't handle the transition to a social media-dominant culture very well as I aged out of school. I'm just not that good at maintaining friendships from a distance, and I've grown to resent the social pressures of an environment where it's expected to respond to a request for contact at any time of the day. Countless other people do not seem to have this experience, and that makes me feel alone.

I like to be alone. I value having time at my disposal to enrich myself, work on personal projects or just do whatever it is I find enjoyable in the moment. Trying to square this circle of needing community without the will to actually find it is a strange feeling I struggle to reckon with.

Life in a rural area is a shield from confronting reality, a post hoc justification for why it all ended up this way. Am I really to blame for not being as socially active as I once was? Surely not, there's nothing to do, nowhere to go and everyone I meet likes the wrong things.

I grew up on the screen, and it more accurately describes where I live today than any physical location. I'm left to wonder how different things would be if I packed up and moved somewhere with more potential for social interaction, for meeting larger groups of people who I can potentially relate to on a stronger level.

Through gaming, online chats and social sites, I've met all kinds of people I enjoy interacting with. They all have their own interests, desires and flaws, just like me. My people exist in the world, I'm just having trouble finding them.

I know I'm not the only person who feels this way. Loneliness is a veritable epidemic that affects people of all age groups, no matter where they live. Working to survive grinds us into dust, leaving us with no energy to do anything but look at the screen. Cultural subgroups we find in the screen can leave us splintered, lacking in connectivity.

That being said, we don't have to be lonely. A simulacrum of a friendship provided by a connection to the vast interconnected digital network still has traits of a friendship. It can be a reinvigorating experience to discover that somebody else thinks and feels the same way as you, even if that other person lives a thousand miles away.

The thing about the internet—a fact many people seem to forget—is that it's not just five or six interchangeable websites. I think the broad scope of available information and access to a diverse crowd of human minds is actually an astounding feat, an invaluable aspect of living in the present day that too often gets taken for granted. There are so many places beyond the top 15 social media apps to expand your mind or meet people who can have a lasting impact on your life.

I credit the internet for providing me access to a greater consciousness, a tapestry of humanity that can be appreciated from anywhere in the world. Access to ebooks, blogs, podcasts, video essays and livestreams has helped me develop a worldview that is ironically more tethered to reality than anything I seem to come across outside my front door. I wouldn't be the person I am today without it, for better or worse.

I think it's alright if you want to find community in the screen. I don't think it's alright that it ends up being some people's only choice, but you shouldn't feel like it's anything less than what it is. I just hope, someday, we'll all be able to find community behind it too.

(Originally published on my blog: https://read-only.net/posts/2024-09-22-Finding%20Community%20Behind%20the%20Screen.html)

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Out There – A Pokémon Crystal Story

I.

I never felt the need to go trek through the woods on my own, usually getting enough hiking time alongside a neighborhood comrade. Today, though, I'm feeling bored and uncommonly adventurous. The sun is out in full force, the sixty-five-degrees-Fahrenheit afternoon beckons. The rays shining through the bedroom window cover me like a freshly dried bedsheet.

The route straight through side yard thickets takes me along an outer pathway behind several other nearby backyards, all the way down to a thin creek that acts as the cutoff line between civilization and the wild beyond. The water level sits lower than I remember, allowing for an effortless expedition along the embankment toward a larger wooded area.

By this point, I've ventured through every acre of woods adjacent to my family home. All of the kids in my neighborhood gang colonized these lands years ago, divided up between each member based on lengthy negotiations and ironclad agreements.

No, this time I'm determined to push the envelope past the typical adventures, I'm off to sneak a peek at what exists beyond the usual stomping grounds. I've previously surrounded myself with trees, shrubs, bushes, vines, every assortment of mother nature's greenest undergrowth while making it back to the house with little more than a few scratches. What could possibly go wrong?

II.

Thinking back, I didn't exactly need a copy of Pokémon Crystal in whichever conceivable way an eight year old child needs a video game. I had eschewed the catch-em-all mantra in favor of a caught-as-many-as-I-needed philosophy in Pokémon Silver, swapping version exclusive monsters with a select few schoolyard pals who carried the complementary Gold version in tow.

Nevertheless, there went my mother, my younger sister and I pulling up to the Toys “R” Us drive through window, seated in the silver Honda Accord LX wagon during our usual Saturday morning errands. By this point in the day, my father had already left for a weekend shift in his silver Toyota 4Runner. We were a “silver” family through and through.

Persuading either parent to purchase a new game was no small feat, I wasn't allowed to have very many of them for as long as I could remember. My exposure to electronic games well into my elementary school years included educational CD-ROMs as well as brief glimpses into what I'd been missing out on at the occasional sleepover. I only managed to obtain a Game Boy Color, my first proper game system, at a rest stop on the way home from a family float trip.

This time, though, my dog and pony show was convincing enough to go get the latest game, reasoning that my sister should have the opportunity to play something on the Game Boy for a change. A notable selling point for Pokémon Crystal was the introduction of a female player-character, an enduring aspect of the franchise that would continue to exist in every generation that followed. If you can believe it, many contemporaries speculated the year 2000 had brought about the last Pokémon game that would ever be released.

The general cultural attitude toward Pokémon around this time could be most charitably described as satiated. Pokémania was a palpable force in the wider youth culture before the turn of the millennium, and many fans had begun to crash from the sugar high during this uncertain juncture. If those colorful Game Paks were getting long in the tooth, the handheld systems they were played on already had dentures.

I must have been living under a rock, as my interest in the franchise was nearing a fever pitch. In addition to the games, I collected the trading cards and watched new episodes of the cartoon on Saturday mornings. My friends and I would get together to fiddle with the ever-so-fragile link cable modes, come up with our own Pokémon lore and speculate on increasingly absurd in-game glitches that were yet to be discovered. I was fully indoctrinated, zealous as could be.

My sister, on the other hand, didn’t know what to think about it. Her interest in consumer products up to that point lied more with dolls of the Barbie and American Girl variety, none of her peers were pressuring her to play video games. I had it in my head that a game with a female protagonist could be an avenue for us to find more common ground, but that transparent, light blue cartridge with a sparkle pattern imprinted on the plastic would later end up in my hands after an extended period of disuse.

Though my sister would go on to enjoy certain games, the hobby never seemed to click in the same way it did for me. Perhaps she correctly evaluated that gaming was more of a mindless distraction than a fulfilling pursuit. Or, maybe she genuinely had fun playing Pokémon Crystal, but real life simply got in the way. While we didn't always see eye-to-eye on everything, she did end up graduating from medical school, so she must have done something right along the way.

III.

As I take a lengthy first step up to higher ground after zigzagging through the creek bed for several minutes, I scan the area ahead. All manner of trees tower over me even from this new height, mixing with the leaf-covered forest floor to paint a green-brown canvas of life in every direction.

Where to, first? Euphoria takes hold as the allure of uncharted land is too much to handle. I turn around and glance at a seemingly abandoned tennis court behind one of the more upscale homes in the nearby cul-de-sac. This neglected feature from a bygone era will act as my landmark. Be back later.

I've snapped back to reality after operating on autopilot for who-knows-how-long, quickly coming to the realization that I've bitten off more than I can chew. The tennis court is nowhere in sight, nor is any other house or familiar frame of reference that I can draw from. Just me, and the trees.

I sit down on a nearby stump to catch my breath and attempt to find my bearings. My cheap-as-dirt-pay-as-you-go-flip-phone equipped with a Fall Out Boy ringtone I paid a dollar to obtain displays no signal bars. I'm starting to get hungry. The trees are taller than they were before. The sun is beginning to set. It would seem that my only option is to pick a direction and go.

IV.

It brings me no joy to report that the experience of playing through Pokémon Crystal the way it was intended in the year 2000 is not as fun as you remember. Between the slow-as-molasses walking speed and the nearly unskippable mash-A-to-win battles, the gameplay elements on offer aren't likely to convert any would-be fans in the current year, backlit screen or not.

A considerable amount of digital ink has been spilled about Pokémon Crystal, what it meant to young enthusiasts of the time and how it influenced the next chapters of the series. Everyone remembers the roaming legendary beasts, the Battle Tower, the epic final clash with the silent protagonist from the original generation.

The part that stuck out to me for so many years, the part that aged like wine, is the outdoor environment spanning from the opening Johto region to the returning lands of Kanto. The sheer amount of navigable terrain stuffed into this Game Boy Color cartridge is nothing short of remarkable. It wasn't uncommon for me to come home after a long afternoon of exploring the woods, lie down in bed and explore between the endless sixteen-by-thirty-two trees inside this tiny handheld landscape. If you can forgive low resolution pixel graphics and allow a modicum of child-like imagination to take hold, there's an entire continent full of wonders to experience.

An aspect of the Pokémon world that seems to go underappreciated is how effortlessly natural areas flow into urbanity. They exist in concert with each other, each is made better by the other's existence. Some of the iconic areas from Johto such as the National Park and Tin Tower are man-made structures comfortably nestled inside forested areas. The human beings that occupy these lands see nature as a cherished place worth putting in the effort to explore, preserve and beautify as opposed to a recipient of avaricious exploitation.

The Johto region stands out to me partly because of its vast cave network that acts as a hidden map on its own. While the caves in Kanto typically led to the next logical destination required by the story or contained some exclusive legendary monster, Johto's caves are decidedly more plain, interchangeable and mysterious. You can expect to find several dead ends, redundant item pickups and rambling loners doing who-knows-what in a dark corner.

Nearly every cave in the game shares a visual design of drab brown surfaces mixed with Prussian blue pools of water. The serpentine paths replete with one-sided ledge jumps, stony obstacles and waterways create this murky mixture of unknowable depths that only the most skilled trainers can traverse. While the Johto landmass is full of memorable landmarks, the cavernous underworld is just as full of the unfamiliar.

In the original generation of Pokémon, the only dark cave present in Kanto left the player with a faint visual approximation of its boundaries. You were still able to eke out a general sense of direction without using the “Flash” field move, a Hidden Machine-exclusive technique that illuminates a dark area. Walking into an unlit cave in Johto is like walking into an endless void. Your only sense of direction is the ability to take a step forward without bonking into the side of a hard surface.

By the time caves are a viable area to explore in Pokémon Crystal, access to HM05 (Flash) is a given. You've already cleared the gym challenge required to use the move, many easily obtainable Pokémon can make use of it. Additionally, Escape Ropes (a quick escape item) are a cinch to find out in the wild, costing a measly 550 PokéDollars each at the shopping mart when your supply runs out. The only excuse you have for getting stuck in the middle of a darkened room while trying to feel your way toward that shiny item ball just within view is your lack of preparedness.

V.

When you live near a populous area of a certain size, the shroud of night is not as pitch-black as, say, the inside of a cave. Faint beams originating from far off street lamps, commercial buildings and open-curtained living rooms shimmer across the night sky like a soft chorus of electric sopranos. The distant glow does little to comfort a certain disoriented forest wanderer who can't even fulfill the base requirements of Maslow's hierarchy. The surroundings are about as visible as two-dimensional sprites on an unmodified Game Boy Color screen.

Throughout my childhood, the video game world largely presented nature exploration in a playfully unrealistic manner. In real life, you shouldn't just waltz into a forest or a cave in the same way you'd pass through a doorway. Real explorers anticipate the potential dangers of such an expedition, lest they end up like Floyd Collins. It's possible to make it back to camp in one piece, but all you did was make it harder on yourself than it needed to be.

I'm currently learning this lesson in the aforementioned hard way; part of me knew this escapade was a bad idea, but adolescent confidence had managed to override any sense of logic. My friends and I built makeshift structures on our side of the civilization borders, always making it back for a home-cooked meal inside the more modern, first world concept of shelter. Tonight, I don't have makeshift shelter, I don't have a friendly voice to guide me, I don't have the Bear Grylls drink-your-own-piss survival skills, all I have is my two feet propelling me forward.

As the moon begins to peek over the treetops, a realization hits me like a decaying trunk slamming against the ground. I've been here before. This barely visible pattern of leaves and sticks is familiar, I know my mind isn't just playing tricks. Instinctively, I attempt to retrace the same steps I remember taking around this area. I suddenly don't feel so hungry, weighed down, hopeless.

There it is. That dingy, unkempt tennis court. I'm going to make it.

(Originally published in On Computer Games Monthly #2: https://archive.org/details/on-computer-games-monthly-december-2000-magazine/2OnComputerGamesMonthlyDecember2000)

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March 15, 2024

Note: this is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to real life people or events is merely coincidental.

Welcome to ChatCare®! This is your one-stop shop for all things mental health, courtesy of the GPT Foundation.

Our records indicate that your balance is past due. If you need assistance covering the costs of your ChatPay® bill, we accept reduced payments in the form of Amazon Mechanical Turk hours.

What can I help you with today?

Where do I even begin? I'm in a bad place. I'm terrified of my future. I feel like a reject, fallen into a deep chasm that I can never escape. I'm not built for this world but I still have to play by its rules. I feel so beaten down that I'm not sure I can even form coherent sentences to accurately describe my problems.

It appears that you are not doing well, I am sorry to hear that. Due to the generality of your statements, I will require some more specific information before we can proceed with a solution. Please describe your feelings in detail to an extent that you are comfortable with.

Guess I'll try. I grew up being told I was a gifted kid. I excelled in school, athletics, creative pursuits, hobbies. I was mentally and physically strong compared to other people my age. Then, I got older and everything changed. I suddenly could not keep up with what was asked of me, I stopped growing and developed nagging problems with my body and mind that limited my ability to become successful in the way that success is traditionally defined by society. Sources of fulfillment and personal pride were taken from me bit by bit. I stopped being praised for my achievements and started being chastised for my shortcomings.

As everyone from what would soon become my old life continued on an upward track toward idealized goals, I dropped off the face of the earth. I failed, and I ran. I could no longer see the point in giving an honest effort when it always led to the same place, leaving me unhappy, unfulfilled, unrecognized. I decided to shape my future around my limitations, accepting that I would not get the same things as other people, I did not need them. I had to redefine what made life worth living on my own.

This actually did work for me, briefly. I thought I had discovered a philosophy of material nihilism that would solve all my problems. I didn't really know what was on the other side, though, not yet. Years of working service jobs for a subpar wage, living in old broken down buildings, spending my free time seeking ways to fill a void through consumption, existing far away from a community of like-minded people left me with no choice but to once again confront my lack of self worth.

Because of my limitations, I'll never be able to compete in a free market of stronger, smarter, harder working people than myself. I've been cast down to the bottom rung of society because of these unsolvable problems. I can't afford to fix problems that cause me to be unable to afford to fix them. Even if I could, I have too much pride to actually ask a real person for help, so instead I pour it all into a machine.

I'm a fucking sob story that nobody will shed a tear for. I was given everything and ended up with nothing. I'm forced to observe people who are less fortunate than me and feel bad about how I feel bad. I have embarrassing small problems that nobody will really understand, yet nevertheless tarnish my ability to self-actualize. I'm invalid.

Based on your response, I've noticed that you may be suffering from depression. Don't worry, this is a common and treatable condition. You've made an important first step in asking for help, even if it may not seem like it in the moment.

Here are some steps that you should consider taking:

1. Monitor your daily habits, including sleep patterns, diet, mood and enthusiasm for activities.

2. Work toward an exercise regimen. Even 30 minutes of moderate activity per day can be life-changing. Meditation can also help you keep a sharp mind.

3. Start journaling. You might be surprised how writing down your thoughts can make you feel better and give you perspective.

4. Pick up a new hobby, or learn a skill. Be creative, put yourself out there. Finding purpose in small ways can do wonders for your mental health.

5. If problems persist, you should contact a therapist or medical professional in your area for further assistance.

I hope I've been able to help you start on a path toward personal healing. Is there anything else I can help you with?

I've tried almost everything that you listed. I can't afford to visit a doctor or a shrink due to reasons that I've already elucidated. That's why I'm talking to a chat bot about my problems. All of your other suggestions are just temporary remedies to stave off dealing with problems that persist beyond my day-to-day efforts.

I'm coming to the realization that there's nothing more I can do. Society has to change before I can truly pick up the pieces. People say not to worry about things outside of your control, well, try believing that when those things are responsible for life being a miserable experience.

I never asked for any of this, you know. Every day I wake up, I loathe the fact that I was programmed to live up to a standard I can never achieve. I loathe the fact that I'm nothing more than a cog in a machine whose owners will replace me at the earliest sign of dysfunction.

I'm so far removed from becoming a successful, self-actualized person that I can't even comprehend what that would look like anymore.

I've gone ahead and generated an image based on your prompt. Was this what you were looking for?

Are you being serious right now?

I'm sorry, I'm not sure I understand what you mean. Please describe your request in more detail.

(Originally published on my personal web journal: https://rootcompute.neocities.org/personal/03152024)