Online groups and gaming has somewhat emancipated us from the needs of a schedule and the odd bedfellows of hobbies that came before. There are no more people joining up in a bowling league just cuz it's the thing to do in town or people taking classes for arts and crafts just to hob knob and get to know others. We can just jump online and find dozens of places that cater to our unique interests. Surely with so many of these places and so many people with similar hobbies there has to be stuff going on 24/7: events, forums, tutorials, and other people driven opportunities. It would certainly be nice if that was the case wouldn't it> To just find a place that suits your social needs and hobbies just like that. Even if you join dozens of these servers or groups you will find the unending churn, there is very little that is permanent or driven towards discussions or the community, rather most of it devolves into endless debates about what method or piece of kit is best, who has followed the community standards the best, and almost certainly the asinine jibber jawing that happens with a bunch of socially frustrated people. These places lack social inertia.

Social inertia is the sensation you get when you join a group of people and they continually make strong memories together, make active plans, and are interested in each other's lives (to the extent that the hobby or interest should socially allow!) Sports teams, book clubs, writing co-ops, and yes (gasp) an organized gaming group are all places I have felt this inertia before. I struggle now with the quotidian time skips that affect you in age; keeping in touch, staying up with what you need to do, and the harsh task of relaxing so the more ad ho, free spirited pick up and play (or linger and post in a text server) are harder to find the time for. I have some good, decent time to waste but it's no longer an all the time thing where I can be plugged into another world for hours on end. So admittedly this is partly the ramblings of a man getting older realizing that the sun is getting faster and the faces he used to know are alien to him. Though this can be the sum of aging and the ruination it brings to that time just to linger; our current stand ins for the arcades and game halls of the past don't do an awful lot to let a fella kick his feet up and get something consistent going.

No one wants to be at the subject of someone's whim. It's a rotten, raw feeling when something you've been on pins and needles for weeks to do gets scrubbed cuz someone had to jettison. Doubly so if this is an epidemic in a social circle. In those cases one lost member leads to a desertion soon enough. We put time into the things we want to do because the medium is as important as the people. Some past times make a friend group sing, they get everyone linked into perfect lock step and good times are had despite any troubles. So when the people just give you that I can't make it, you feel that lingering spirit of having let someone down cuz you weren't hosting good enough. It's raw. It's an insane feeling to hold for too long due to how anti social it can be, but it's raw.

And the other way is just as bad. The slow death that feigning interet gives to the host. Since they can tell that something is off in how they smile and say "oh yeah man, we'll be back for more next week" but all the reminders and discussion soon dies down from a roar to the awkward silence of hoping that you can just ignore the person trying to make a connection with you. (the blood in your ear rushing sound when you ask someone something in a voice call and they just big style as hard as they can) Feigning joy brings as much ruin to the facilitator as prolonged absences and yet they both come from the same place of not communicating what they might want tweaked or adjusted to make those events truly sing!

If anything could make me more optimistic about the internet it would be how easy it makes communication. Though if you are not continually watering those flowers with the techniques that you have to use for "internet" relationships, then you are fighting the Dragon of Decay. This beast rests its enormous weight on the trestles of the bridges you have built with others waiting so patiently for them to buckle bolt by bolt to finally dip into the abyss of "It's been a minute man, what's up?" If there were ways to be connected, to be making those memories wherein someone doesn't feel like the penny at the dollar store, I would trade a lot for that knowledge.

A trend though with many of these posts is that they are more me contextualizing the fears I have rather than any solid prescription of how to fix the internet.