[ SECRET POST #2104 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2104 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 129 secrets from Secret Submission Post #301.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 1 2 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 1 - repeat x 3 (NS to begin with)], [ 1 - unreadable ], [ 1 - secret posted as text ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Re: Life if the internet never existed.

[pantswarrior]

I'd probably have no communication skills at all. I wasn't shy as a kid, though a lot of people thought I was just because I was quiet, and didn't feel a need to say anything unless people asked me something directly, and then I'd just answer the question and shut up again (unless it was a topic I was really interested in - in which case you'd see firsthand I wasn't shy, good luck getting me to shut up...). And due to various pre-adolescent traumatic experiences and basically getting amazing scores on the SATs in 6th grade, I decided to quit going to school when I was 13, and my parents were okay with it, so I had pretty much no socialization outside my church youth group.

Until I got a modem at age 17, back in the days before the internet was really a widespread thing. Local BBSes, however, were plentiful, and I pretty much learned how to talk to people via chat rooms on the local multilines, and then awkwardly practiced turning that into real life conversations when we had board-wide get-togethers around town. Amusingly, social awkwardness was sort of the bonding factor in my first attempt at a relationship. Which lasted all of one real-life date after numerous private messages back and forth, because we were that awkward.

But I got better! By the time internet access was a thing that people actually had at home instead of going to the library to use, I was pretty darned chatty via text, and had gotten used to the idea of small talk and such. And... yeah. Discovered there was such a word as "fanfiction", and that people made sites where they posted their art, and met lots of people that way.

And oddly enough, most of the groups I fell in with were largely GLBT. Which struck me as really weird at first. I'd known a couple of gay and bi folks through the local BBS systems, and thus didn't think that the orientation was weird or that gay/bi people were creepy or anything, but I wondered why I kept winding up in groups online that were largely populated by people who weren't straight. Until during one late-night chat when a group of us who knew each other pretty well for several years by that point were talking about masturbation habits, and I was like "Wait... you mean people actually do that?" because I never had. And that led to the realization I wasn't "normal" like I had assumed, straight by default... which eventually led to me learning that asexuality was a thing that actually existed, and to figuring out that apparently a relationship with another woman was right for me, since we're now engaged and have been living together for years.

Another thing the internet did for me - we met on a fanfic mailing list while she was still in... either Seattle or San Francisco, I forget which, and we talked a bunch through IRC and LJ, and were in an RP together. While we were getting to know each other, she moved across the country back to her hometown in MA, and there wasn't really a break in our growing friendship, which grew into more than friendship. Try that without the internet. ;)