It feels like gopherspace is tense 
these days. I've been reading phlogs 
expressing great concern about what this 
space is ... and what it can be. I don't 
feel that way. I find the self-hosted 
nature of gopher liberating and the 
content fascinating. It's all so DIY.... 
and human.

Solderpunk wrote a phlog post quite a 
while ago called "host something," or 
something to that effect. That's the 
greatest thing about this little corner 
of the internet. So many people are 
making it happen.

That's something. There's all this talk 
about open source and libre software, 
but the most important thing is not the 
software -- or the hardware -- it's 
having a space for free _people_ to 
express themselves without moderation. 
And for that space to exist, it has to 
belong to those people, not to some 
supervising entity that can twist the 
nature of the space to serve their 
financial interests. Anyone can spend a 
few dollars and fire up a raspberry pi 
as a server -- or just get an account on 
someone else's micro-pubnix -- and be a 
part of this .... is it a community? Is 
it an agglomeration of strangers talking 
to each other and sometimes across one 
another? I don't know. But I like it. 
And I like that we're our unmoderated 
selves (or at least that our moderation 
is self-moderation). I even like that we 
don't know if anyone is going to read 
what we wrote[1] and that there's no 
like button[2] (great pieces, by the 
way, losthalo and kvothe). You may like 
this post. You may not. You may write 
something to tell me what you think. But 
you won't (I hope) count up all the 
likes and hates this phlog receives. If 
you do, email the results to visiblink@ 
zaibatsu.circumlunar.space to ruin my 
day...

Solderpunk wrote about the Finnish girls 
hockey team being glued to their phones 
in a public ceremony[3]. I've seen 
similar things from time to time, but I 
wouldn't take that moment (and that very 
powerful image) as representative of the 
modern zeitgeist. A few years ago, I was 
really worried that the young were going 
to turn into a tribe of phone-obsessed 
zombies. But these days, I meet a lot of 
very intelligent, introspective, 
genuinely nice young people, and they 
seem to be able to put away their phones 
and interact with other human beings for 
extended periods of time. Many of them 
are very creative and artistic, and get 
involved in all kinds of community 
events and activities. I know that's not 
what people expect to hear, but it's 
what I'm seeing.

I see the same thing here. Smart, 
introspective people expressing 
themselves. You people are really 
intriguing, though you don't write 
enough.... ;) In some ways I wish that 
more people would join us. In others, I 
know that that's not what I really want. 
This is a counter-culture. Most people 
won't join us on port 70 (even though 
setting up a gopher server had the 
lowest learning curve of anything I've 
done on the small internet), and I kind 
of like that. I need something to make 
me feel a little unique (or peculiar? I 
don't know). For years, I've been 
reading that 20?? will be the year of 
the Linux desktop. God forbid! I like 
being part of the 1 or 2%.

So for me, the small internet is best 
because it's small. Because it's DIY. 
Because it's human. Keep hosting and 
posting. Keep talking about your Palm 
pilots, anti-capitalist biases, drug 
habits, deer kills, moving adventures, 
furry tendencies(!!!) and the like. Cat, 
I know I'm not going to save gopher, but 
I kind of feel like gopher is actually 
saving me[4].


[1] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7elosthalo/nusuth/nusuth-20190601.txt
[2] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/1/%7ekvothe/phlog/2019-06-01-anticommercial/
[3] gopher://zaibatsu.circumlunar.space/0/%7esolderpunk/phlog/cycles-of-optimism-and-pessimism.txt
[4] gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20190530.txt
    gopher://baud.baby/0/phlog/fs20190531.txt