four or five months after the group was created, things shifted: people brought in new friends, friends who weren't part of the original dynamic decades ago. and so the feel shifted. one person in particular seemed to assume the group now revolved around her, and the vibes were no longer great. whereas before we were largely always cool, in the after, fault lines appeared, and people started reading other people's posts in bad faith. regular fights broke out. if i'm being honest, i think some people liked the drama. some people like a fight, look for opportunities to make shit with other people.
but that's not me. i hate conflict, and so after this happened again, and again, and again, i said my goodbyes, and just left. it felt a little sad, but there was also a really profound sense of relief. i don't want to deal with drama llamas in my 40s. none of us are 16 anymore, so why are we acting like it? we're paunchier, uglier, closer to death. why do we want to fight?
so i'm down to just a couple of chats on whatsapp — one with my overseas family, and a couple of one-on-ones with some old friends. maybe that's better, even if right now i'm sort of mourning the loss. it feels a bit like we couldn't overcome human nature, that when we read something that jolts us, we're unable to step back and say, okay, what might they be trying to mean? instead, more fights, terse or tentative apologies in the following days, while in the meantime, yet another person (this time me) decides that this isn't worth it, that we should be trying to be good to each other, and if we're not trying for that, then what's the point?
weirdly, i wish i was in more chats like this, just — more focused? fewer people. having dozens of active people & hundreds of messages a day feels like too much. there are some people i'd love to talk to again so much, but the decades of distance and quiet make this nearly impossible, the first step, the reaching-out, full of paralysis. social media is a hole. i don't want to be on a site full of everyone, and i don't think i ever did. i want to get back to the small internet, to conversations with friends, to places off the map, and i don't know how to ask the people i used to care about (and still care about), who might not have thought about me in a very long time, if they'd be up to chat again.
if we used to chat, over ICQ or AIM, over email - i hope you're okay, drop me a line.