The digital loss & PCs in an online social world

Losing your PC can be a really painful experience... Similar to losing precious data like Uska did, losing a PC due to hardware being either broken or burnt can bu equally painful. My PC died around October, it was quite random too. Good news is that only the processor seems to have died and the data and other hardware is intact. Still, I've suffered from PC withdrawal for the last 3 months. Something that didn't happen since I had my own PC 4 years ago, so now I'm back to the sharing days. Right now I can say that it hasn't been as hard as I thought, due to my lack of online social life which is nothing compared to how it was in my teens.

My dead PC

Online social life is an important aspect in a world where the internet is everywhere, and so it was for me, especially in such years where one tends to be so emo and lame but still in need of social acceptance never the less. Whether it is online games or forums or IRC, I experienced all 3 of them, each with its own 'Golden Age'. The first one was PSO. Though I started with EQ and played other MMOs like DAoC, AO, AC2, Lineage2, etc; PSO stood as the pinnacle of online gameplay in a highly social environment. I, who was an outcast pretty much throughout all my junior high and high school life, found a lot of comfort, support and fun in such game. Then there'd be the forum and Sunday meetings which increased my interaction with new people. It also served as a means or me and Uska to spend time together when we sometimes couldn't meet up to hang out. PSO also stands out as the only constant online game that I played for around 5 years.

Now those were the days.

Forums and IRC came next, where I would spend there hours either being idle or chatting about nothing. Still it probably filled the gap in the more lonely years of high school, and overall, I had some good laughs in #Noated ^^; Plus there were the staff channels in Uska's fansub groups. I'd always be on standby for many projects but I had bad luck D: I timed two episodes, one having its release cancelled and the other being released even though they forgot to put my name in the credits -lol-.

Some of the conversations really were pointless.

Anyways after that came a sudden fallout of anything related to social interaction through online means. College had a lot to do with this, probably because it consumed more time and the drastic change of environment had its consequences, in a extremely positive way. So the need for social interaction lowered and after passing through so many experiences, I've come to a point where I lurk some forums sometimes, play some online games here and there and I sometimes chat with some old online friends.

Still thinking of myself today without such a techy based background in my teens and childhood is pretty hard. It's also interesting to note how I was able to experience the birth of the internet, online games and communities first hand one by one. Starting with the Sega Genesis and our first Packard Bell PC to having the courage to build my own computer and being fully inmersed in an online world. PCs and technology are in that way really amazing. It gave me the ability to socialize in many ways with people around the world in times where social anxiety used to pretty much dictate my life -hehe- Today though, I'm still a loner and I dislike being in big groups but not in terms of fear but in terms of taste really. I'm picky with who I hang out with but I enjoy having a conversation with strangers. The online social life helped me in acquiring confidence when it came to who I was and gave me the chance to have a social life that wasn't ruled by the same standards of the majority. If I were to lose my PC in those days, I'd be suffering a lot ^^; So yeah, technology is a big deal today, and its implications in the development of a person's personality and psyche are significant, for bad or for worse.