Sometimes I have a very hard time recognizing myself when looking back at my teenage years. While my core interests didn't really shift too heavily, what I was doing daily and how much of it is quite different, and nowhere is this more apparent than in how much time I spent being active in online communities. I could best describe my early to mid teens as having a pretty heavy presence on some now dead forums, in Jazz Jackrabbit 2 multiplayer (when I was still an active player), and a combination of Skype plus a few IRCs. The latter two would eventually be replaced with Discord and Matrix servers.

With Discord specifically I was really let loose. The previously mentioned spaces were active but small, but now I had access to utterly massive online circles that almost always had something going on. It took a while to learn some proper etiquette, but that didn't stop me from becoming arguably addicted to constant chatting. Things got even worse when I got my first Android device in 2016, now that I had working Internet access on the go. Seriously, it seemed like I could never stay out of a channel for more than a few minutes. If it weren't for my dislike of most social networking services, who knows how much worse this could've got.

However, as the years went by, my online presence has been on a steady decline, to the point where I now have several days go by where I don't even take a glance at Discord and WhatsApp, and up to several months where I'm dead silent on Tw@tter. What changed? Well, it ain't the days of high school anymore, spending 6 hours a day in a facility where half the classes are a waste of everyone's time. Now I have a degree, a 7-to-3 job, a lot more life responsibilities, family struggles, etc... but those can't be the only factors, it's not like my teenage years were smooth sailing. So then what is it?

This is something I talked about with my friends from high school and college a few times at this point, and we generally came to the same conclusion: we get fatigued from large social circles as we age. Of course this isn't an universal truth, but it is definitely a thing that happens to a decent number of people. It is very difficult to explain the how and why, it's just something that clicks within, where we become more satisfied with smaller friend circles (both offline and online) and start tuning out of larger places. I would add that it's also the fact that over time we create contacts with individuals that we have better chemistry with, and for them we'll likely prefer private one-on-one chats and meetups than constantly being around strangers we barely know and/or don't care too much about. There comes a point where the number of closer contacts is large enough that they're the only ones we regularly talk with.

Finally, we simply feel the passage of time more as we age, and we want to spend it on things we find most valuable.

I think that's all I can really say on the matter right now. This is a pretty complex topic that I would like to revisit proper in a followup post at some point, but I gotta sort some things out now (there's that pesky life getting in the way of things again!). I will however take this opportunity to announce my departure from webrings and the like, particularly the decentralized Lainchan one. I found it a cute little thing back in late 2022 when I was still under the .superglobalmegacorp.com domain (thanks neozeed!) and wanted to participate, but now I almost never check the threads out and I feel like I have next to nothing in common with the people who are in it right now. Not helping matters is that over half the catalogue is either entirely dead or also announced their departure, so it's really just a sinking ship. I will however keep adding links to places I find interesting or those where I have good relations with the operator(s).