(Hope you don't mind a long-time lurker commenting; also, this comment may not be coherent- your entry stirred up a lot of thoughts.)
THIS.
I grew up in the Internet generation, but I also grew up in an incredibly rural village in Michigan. We had no bookstores, and the nearest bookstore was 40 miles away. Our library was one room (and shared a space with the town hall) and I'd read every sf/f book in it by the age of 10. We didn't even have Anne McCaffrey. I would have killed for something of that quality at that age.
My friends and I thought we'd invented fanfiction, and passed around a notebook between us, writing Buffy stuff. Imagine my shock when our village got finally Internet when I was twelve (this was, fyi, in 2000) and I stumbled on ff.net. We had spent years thinking we were completely alone, and it turned out there was this huge community out there.
Thank you so much for writing about the feral geek. My roots are very much there, and I oftentimes still feel that way, given that I SUCK with technology and couldn't figure out a bittorrent thingie to save my life. But if the option is between discretely handing off notebooks to my friends and hoping I don't get beat up for being a geek, or posting my fanfiction on my journal and proudly proclaiming my geek status, I'll gladly take the mainstream option, thanks.
no subject
THIS.
I grew up in the Internet generation, but I also grew up in an incredibly rural village in Michigan. We had no bookstores, and the nearest bookstore was 40 miles away. Our library was one room (and shared a space with the town hall) and I'd read every sf/f book in it by the age of 10. We didn't even have Anne McCaffrey. I would have killed for something of that quality at that age.
My friends and I thought we'd invented fanfiction, and passed around a notebook between us, writing Buffy stuff. Imagine my shock when our village got finally Internet when I was twelve (this was, fyi, in 2000) and I stumbled on ff.net. We had spent years thinking we were completely alone, and it turned out there was this huge community out there.
Thank you so much for writing about the feral geek. My roots are very much there, and I oftentimes still feel that way, given that I SUCK with technology and couldn't figure out a bittorrent thingie to save my life. But if the option is between discretely handing off notebooks to my friends and hoping I don't get beat up for being a geek, or posting my fanfiction on my journal and proudly proclaiming my geek status, I'll gladly take the mainstream option, thanks.