1 Nov 2022
11/1 '22
Nos et mutamur in illis.
I started hanging around Metafilter in law school, late 90s. I was a 10ker who managed to snag an account during the wild days of sign-up windows, which were randomly open for very short periods of time.
For years, I was a monthly subscriber and a regular member of local meet-up host committee. I spent a lot of time on Metafilter, for twenty years nearly. I have remained logged-in but not actually looked at anything over there in years; early pandemic, I think, is what finally drove me away for good, including ending my subscription.
Now, it seems, the financial situation is dire and the place may shutter. Which seems about time to me. Not because Metafilter has changed—though it has—but because the internet has.
A friend (a 1ker) has always said "Never read the comments, including at Metafilter." And he's right. When I first went there and stayed, the comments were irrelevant. In 1998, the internet was random and hidden.
In 1998, you went to Metafilter because the front page was the fruit of people spending hours, clicking random links and find that place where a person posts her daily ode to today's random insect or that place where another person is documenting every published photograph of Cher's knees or a grand conspiracy theory about Violet Beauregard. Finding fabulous things you would never have stumbled across on your own. Gawping at strange obsessions. Laughing with the wonderful things people do when they are doing them for self, not audience.
This is not the internet anymore. Everything now is someone's pitch, someone's product, someone's public face. Curation not needed any longer. Whatever the internet is now, it's not random. It's not personal. Treasures are not hidden. Back then, when they were hidden, Metafilter found them and shared them. It was invaluable.
But the internet changed; Metafilter changed, more or less successfully. And Metafilter—for me—lost its purpose as it became about the discussion, the conversation, the community. I can't imagine going back.
