911 attack. I was sleeping on the couch at a friend’s place and he was apparently awake gaming online (yes that was already a thing in 2001). He came into the living room and apologized for waking me up but he wanted to turn on the TV because someone on the game server had said there had been an “incident”. This was a few minutes before the 2nd WTC plane hit. So it wasn’t yet clearly a terrorist attack. Ended up watching the coverage all day.

I was on a MUD (old multi-player internet text rpg) called Three Kingdoms when Princess Diana died. Over a hundred people online at the time from all over the world.

It was a huge shock for everyone, followed by a strange communal grieving for a well-known and liked international figure.

It wasn’t exactly unexpected, but I didn’t expect it, if that makes sense. I was working at the call center of an insurance company on election night in 2016, and my team was half people from Connecticut in office and half remote people from non-Chicagoland Illinois, politically divided exactly as you’d expect. My shift went 13-23:30 EST, and the team chat was trying to be somewhat non political, but it was tough.

When I went into work, it seemed like Hillary would win, but throughout our shift, my coworkers and I kept getting chirps about new states being counted while the office slowly emptied (most people in office were on core hours, so by 19, we were the only ones left, including cleaning crews). When the first firm-ish numbers came in, one of our remote team members just spammed the chat with a bunch of terrible r/thedonald memes and there was an audible groan from the group.

I didn’t like Clinton, but I was certain she’d win, because I was pretty sheltered in a New England state. Hearing that trump won felt like finding out your foundation is full of mold. I don’t know how else to describe it, except that I was certain we’d choose the “chicken that’ll do” (I know that was a spoof from the democratic debate, but it feels on brand for her whole deal).

I learned that justin timberlake got arrested from a steam notification that said “Justin Timberlake (DUI enjoyer) is now playing Team Fortress 2”

I watched a conspiracy theory video with a friend for laughs in early 2020. I think January or February. It mentioned some kind of virus from china that was gonna take over the world. We laughed about it.

I discovered Mastodon the night the Wagner group started marching toward Moscow, and was seeing live updates. From telegram or something. That was crazy.

Fucking public freakout weirdly broke a lot of news for me back on Reddit.

George Floyd, the protests, crazy trump news, Myanmar… Strangely what sticks out is the Target fire extinguisher lady on a rascal that ended up being parodied in Atlanta. Like, I saw that shit live completely accidentally.

It was crazy how before something had a chance to hit the news, someone already had a full video (sometimes even with context) posted.

The user base was terrible at times, and likely is now again. But there was a period when so much crazy shit was going on, that it actually had rational takes the crazy was diluted enough.

It was just nuts to have a random Livestream up, and see huge national news stories unfolding live or at least immediately after filming.

I don’t think people realized how all that shit lead to political engagement in 2020, people were fucking pissed and motivated.

I was eating Pizza at Amici in San Rafael, CA when news came across that Princess Diana died. Someone at the table said we’d all remember that moment for the rest of our lives. It’s been true me.

Might as well share my weirdest proto social media thing.

9/11.

(I’m in Finland. This happened in the afternoon.)

I was leaving work. I distinctly remember a coworker being alarmed about news.

I turned to the usual news source. Slashdot. Massive bloody thread about airplanes hitting the World Trade Center.

OK, that’s pretty bad.

I finally turn to TV news. …OK, stuff is far more in flames than I expected. I think I caught one of the towers collapsing in live TV.

But the following days, my primary news source about 9/11 was, actually, IRC! There was a channel on Freenode where a bot posted headlines about 9/11 investigations. Because the actual news websites were bloody dead under the massive traffic.

On the reverse side I told a bunch of people on Furcadia that 2 airplanes had just hit the twin towers.

Do not Google Furcadia on your work PC.