The Autistic Soul of the Internet Has Been at Death’s Door for Years. Its End May Finally Be Here.
The Autistic Soul of the Internet Has Been at Death’s Door for Years. Its End May Finally Be Here.
Blogs, forums, and sites like Twitter used to be a haven for people with autism. That internet is gone.
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As an autistic who has been online since the early 90s, this article didn't speak to me at all. My autistic internet comprised IRC and USENET, and it died when LiveJournal died. I still have close friends from those days, when I have no close friends "IRL"- I can't say that for anyone I met on Twitter or Facebook, in fact I found both of those platforms to begin enshittifying looong before any of the NTs began to notice it.
I don't think it's just because I'm an older AuDHD woman, I think the existence of Facebook and Twitter from the mid to late 00s killed the autistic internet.
@YourHeroes4Ghosts @hedge I started a couple years before that, in the late 80s, with BBSes. Facebook and Twitter in particular have felt like the beginning of the end. Socializing online was suddenly less about meeting new people, and more about catching up with people you knew in high school, which is a big no thanks from me. My friends in high school were from the BBSes, so I didn't need to recapture those relationships on some other website.
I am Gen Z, and besides Lemmy, most of my online life is IRC and XMPP (plus a certain video game, if it counts). Some people there, including me, have personal websites. This internet is not gone, it is just smaller than it used to be)