💾 Archived View for tilde.pink › ~emily › sad › meatspace.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 04:11:39. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content

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adventures in meatspace

meatspace is my least favourite communications protocol.

you can't change your avatar
there's no support for instant-messaging
there are no logs or backups
there's no standard encryption
the userbase is practically overrun by trolls
it's nearly completely undocumented
the docs that are available are all conflicting
it's messy as all heck
it's physically /and/ mentally a pain to use.

my biggest gripe is that it's mandatory! you /have/ to connect to meatspace in order to connect to cooler protocols like irc, xmpp, gemini, or email!

and since meatspace is a requirement to use, i may as well try my best to use it.

coming out in meatspace

i came out as trans to my older brother a few days ago. i sort of cheated because i texted him, rather than using a meatspace-direct method of interaction.

my bro is one of the coolest, most chill meatspace users i know of, which is why i decided to talk to him about it, instead of talking to the troll accounts that are usually online.

walks in meatspace

"walks" are a feature in meatspace that allow you to see what other meatspace users have left behind for you to find. sometimes the things you find are from users who deleted their accounts, or whose accounts expired in one way or other.

you get to see the generation of the protocol as well; in order to keep things somewhat clean for new users, all content in meatspace has an expiery date. the way meatspace does this is by running constant degradation functions, that will, seemingly randomly, flip bits, corrupt files, and terminate accounts.

cleverly, instead of making everything degrade very fast, some things degrade much slower. trees (programs that output data which we use for inputs in order to, in turn, output our own data) are required for most accounts to function properly, so they don't degrade as quickly, and they generally multiply, so that "trees" as a concept is virtually immortal.

so when i say "see the generation of the protocol", for most users this means to see the trees, to receive their data, and to feel humbled by their lifespan.

music in meatspace

you don't download opus files in meatspace; you're required to stream your own music yourself, by generating tones similar to how a music file would.

some people have gotten really good at generating tones. i'm still relatively new to the facility, as i sort of neglected all artistic functions of meatspace. speaking of which...

art in meatspace

all art is weird. the expression of oneself in all their sadness & sorrows, displayed for other users to say "lol same".

it requires time to properly use meatspace's artistic facilities, since they aren't well documented, and many times, in order to use them properly, you are required to interact with other talented users, which i'm scared of doing.

conclusion

i feel like calling meatspace "meatspace" is a bit pretentious, as it did start off as a joke, but i don't want to call it "real life", because that would make me sad, since i'm on the computer most of the time, and i'd feel like i'm not a "real person".

april 04, 2021