Back here for the first while in a long while, and you articulated that perfectly. It's rolling back to being in high school, with almost no one to connect with. Because who else in your rural offshoot of a small city stayed up till 2am after working the closing shift at a grocery store, entering a program line-by-line from a magazine into their Atari 800XL? Who else did you know that played Tangerine Dream's Force Majeure until they wore the vinyl out? No one, that's who.
But even with the enshittification of everything and the necessary retreat from it, there is still more connection and more tribe than I had ever dreamed possible. Some of that tribe are even coworkers. It's far better than high school and THAT level of isolation. So thank you for the perspective shift!
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~softwarepagan wrote (thread):
I feel the need to clarify that we lived 30 minutes by highway from the nearest tiny town - one of those ubiquitous "towns" that dot the rural landscape which is really just a gas station, a school, and an old folks' home. There was a public library as well which was often my refuge.
I'm glad it was a comforting thought to you, as well. I grew up 30 minutes from any human civilization, so I didn't have many people in my life besides my immediate family at all, let alone any who shared my interests. My father was a freelance software engineer and my sister was just as nerdy as I was (for a while) but it was a very lonely existence. This is no different - we've done this before. And yes, you are right, there still do seem to be more people around who share this type of interest.