Terrific story. Personal, authentic, and very relatable. Interest in and an aptitude for computers also saved me. (I even had a job in a computer store.)
> I made the cold calculation that as painful as my life was, it was probably better than rolling the dice with the child protection services.
Yup. I too decided at age 11, choosing to live with the less bad parent.
And shortly thereafter, those decisions were made for me, resulting in the state putting me into foster care. Somehow I avoided the worst; while the 1st family was pretty much what you'd expect, I later lucked into a good family.
--
I wonder how many of us there are. I've known so many runaways, beaten kids, sexually abused kids, kids with broken parents. And that's just in my wealthy, prosperous city. I can't imagine how much worse it is every where else.
I also marvel that somehow some of us find a way out, while seemingly most others get sucked into the abyss. So much human potential lost due to poor circumstances and stupid luck. It fills me with deep sadness.
And I wonder what the difference is. How are some able to escape their fate? If we can identify those success factors, maybe we can maximize chances for success. Could even be small measures, like how we now have suicide prevention hotlines, and resources for victims of human trafficking.
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I had many, many people help me over the years. People who had no reason to help, but did nonetheless. I call them my angels. People like a little league coach (who'd drive me to practice), a youth pastor (who mentored me), the foster family that raised me, etc, etc.
As society becomes harsher, more coarse, more dog-eat-dog, I worry that other lost kids won't have their own angels.
> I too decided at age 11, choosing to live with the less bad parent.
I chose this at 13, but due to his new spouse and her opinions about proper gendered behavior, it meant I had to move and lost all the adults who were supporting my programming. I was supposed to like clothes, make-up, and have feminine hobbies, so no more electronics gifts and no more access to the classes and meetings that the larger community had. (I moved from a metro area of 500k to a town of 2k).
I still worry if it would have been better for my career to stay and accept the greater abuse, which is fucked up. Am I deflecting responsibility and blaming others for my own failures? Etc.
> As society becomes harsher, more coarse, more dog-eat-dog, I worry that other lost kids won't have their own angels.
I'm hoping I can be one. I'm trying to be a good adult, and I want to work with foster teens eventually.
> I still worry if it would have been better for my career to stay and accept the greater abuse, which is fucked up. Am I deflecting responsibility and blaming others for my own failures? Etc.
Wondering if growing up in a more supportive environment would have helped you advance more quickly is a perfectly reasonable question, that’s not “blaming others for your failures”.
Don’t be so hard on yourself, it sounds like you were placed into a very difficult set of circumstances.
> Am I deflecting responsibility and blaming others for my own failures?
No. You were forced to make a decision. You did the best you could.
You did not fail. You survived. You're still here. Fighting. Trying to become the person you were always meant to be.
Doubt, rumination, self-examination can all be helpful. Those of us without good role models have to work harder to figure out which way is up.
I only encourage you to not dwell too long on the past. Like I've done. There's only such much juice to squeeze from those turnips. After a time, you'll be better served by looking forward.
I don't have complete answers, but my capstone project in college involved interviewing a handful of people who volunteered in their communities to see if we could come up with some hypotheses about hooks to get more people to engage with their local communities.
My takeaway from the interviews was that people's reasons for volunteering were essentially intrinsic, not extrinsic. One guy had benefited from books donated to his prison so felt he should pay it forward after he was out. A mom volunteered in activities her kids were engaging in. Someone else volunteered as a way of staying socially active. There _were_ clear motivations, but not something you'd likely have much luck leveraging en masse without knowing someone's history and what they personally cared about.
However, you can maybe approach the problem preemptively by creating an environment that creates the sorts of people who will give back to their community (maybe being a good foster parent to a kid who decides it's important to be a good faster parent to someone else). It's not fool proof - even good parents can see their kids go bad - but it's a start.
I don't believe communities will bond together as long as the state provides a fake feeling of social security (lower case). The state came in and declared itself the entity you turn to when times are tough: you lost your job, became disabled/sick, need daycare/schooling for your kids, etc. Now, instead of having relationships with your community, you have a relationship with the state.
With the modern design of communities with powerful governments, you will only find small pockets where people have chosen to come together for some higher purpose like religious communities. And yes of course small/random exceptions to these rules will exist, but this is how it works at scale.
I really feel like you would benefit from learning more about what life was like before the advent of social safety nets. What charity there was was woefully insufficient for the need, and one often only qualified if they were of a particular religious group. Mostly, people were at the mercy of their family. I know that sounds like a 'good thing' but go read biographies of the time. People were forced to endure horrific abuse by their close or extended families simply because they had no where else to go.
The state providing it's citizens a basic foundational safety net is a good thing. There are tons of things that have broken down social cohesion, but safety nets are not one of them. Have a look at the scandi countries.
We're not talking about breaking down social cohesion in the sense of total chaos in the streets. We're talking about neighbors knowing each other and taking care of each other. Loneliness and depression are at all time highs despite the largest social safety nets in history.
Cherry picking a few of the wealthiest countries in the world that are racially and culturally homogeneous is not very helpful. One of those scandi countries just announced suicide pods where you can go kill yourself because so many people want to.
It's fine to say the social programs are worth the cost, but don't deny the cost.
This comment is so all over the place I don't really know where to begin. First, I would argue it's easier to know and care for one another when one's basic needs are met. You're simply moving up the maslow hierarchy.
Second: I googled this. Some inventor in Switzerland hires an independent consultant to see whether his euth booth is legal. Switzerland is not a scandi country. This is not legal approval by the government.
Third: Sweden has just as high percentage of foreign born population as the US. If anything I would argue american cultural identity is much stronger than Sweden's. Racial and cultural homogeneity is such a tired and lazy argument against safety nets I won't even bother to address it. It's a non sequitur at this point.
Exactly. Centralizing resources at the state level - whether it's financial, social or whatever - removes the biggest success factor: what's in it for me? A lot of people tend to look at that phrase cynically. I tend to be more pragmatic - no one is going to care about my needs more than I am. And if I go the 100% selfish path then no one else is going to want to interact with me, so it's in my self interest to NOT be a jerk - self governing.
Start to break down those personal interdependencies (and remove some of those self governing mechanisms at the same time too) by inserting shortcuts around them - like substituting resources from government - and you start to see things break down.
Just look at the effects of welfare on minority communities. Disincentives for young women from getting married and you have generations of kids, especially young males, without the influence of a father - and the results of that are pretty apparent. As others point out, even crappy parents are often way better than the alternatives.
The middle class of the black community in particular was rapidly expanding post WWII - until the "great society" welfare programs kicked in, with pretty devastating results - to them, anyway. It was a boon for politicians who now had power over an ever growing and dependent base.
Your romanticization of post WWII conditions is highly inaccurate. Black middle class expanded because of migration insofar as segregation and maltreatment allowed.
Take Silicon Valley. Segregation was legal and often preferred there until 1964 so the growing Black middle class was systematically denied entry in the 1950s to the growing job potential there. How many Blacks worked at HP in 1960s, or Intel in 1970s? How many Blacks worked at a mechanic shop or a cleaning service or a coffee place or any auxiliary business in Silicon Valley in the post WWII era, so their children could gain a foothold in the schools and the massive wealth creation engine? How many Black dental hygienists were there in Santa Clara county? Secretaries? Schoolteachers? Firefighters?
How many Black friends did Steve Jobs have in grade school in the 1960s?
There was less income inequality between blacks and whites during Jim Crowe than today. You can expand that to almost every measure of well-being like broken families, suicide rates, criminality, etc.
This is obviously not a post advocating for Jim Crowe. But it is a post that is asking for an explanation as to why blacks are doing so much worse compared to whites today than they were during Jim Crowe. Do you believe we've gotten more racist?
First of all, your claims about well being are nonsense. Use a real statistic like literacy or average number of lost teeth. The white-Black literacy disparity or dental health disparity is clearly lower than 1950.
Also, none of your claimed income statistics are sufficiently granular to start a discussion since the average Black American worker may be something like 10 years younger than the average white American worker and also a weighted average by county of residence shows that Blacks live in places with lower wages compared to whites.
Edit: you're not wrong that social problems have changed and some could be due to government interventions but you paint a broad brush that is not accurate and sounds like a talking point blurb
Does this track actually track with places where the government has largely ignored, such as lgbtqia and immigrant communities? Would anyone reasonably describe undocumented immigrants as having a community that is more robust, bonding together, and having less folks slip through the cracks than a well-funded government with a strong safety net could provide? How is the lgbtqia community going to fund trans people's surgeries and medications, and are they doing it better than what a well-funded healthcare system with minimal bigotry towards trans medical needs would do?
In turn, does this mean we can extrapolate and figure out whether or not more social safety net containing countries, like say the nordic countries, do they have a lesser sense of community than somalia?
> ...does this mean we can extrapolate and figure out whether or not more social safety net containing countries...
I've long assumed that financial insecurity leads to all sorts of bad outcomes. Alcoholism, abuse, suicide, etc. The damage spanning generations and very hard to heal.
So I support any and all efforts to improve that security. Universal healthcare, universal childcare, affordable housing, living wages, parental leave, small business loans. Name it, I probably support it. In other words, Nordic style social democracy, or whatever it's called.
But in truth, I don't actually know that kids in Denmark and Norway do better than in my home state. Overall.
I feel like this is something I should know. I have friends who work on progressive policy issues. So I know tidbits. For instance, that generously investing in preschool greatly improves the lifetime outcomes of those kids.
But I don't even know where to look for population level comparisons. And my quick foraging online was fruitless.
I don't have a good solution to child abuse and have never seen a good solution in practice anywhere in the world.
Are you aware of any organizations or collections of individuals that are responsible for more child abuse and death than the governments of the world?
Are you aware of any country that has implemented a set of policies that obviously and dramatically reduced child abuse?
I see cultural variances, wealth correlations, etc. But never have I seen a program or simple set of programs that looks anything like a silver bullet on child abuse.
You could probably convince me of some programs that are beneficial (even if not a silver bullet), you are unlikely to be able to convince me that the benefits outweigh the costs of death and suffering to children from things like war, sanctions, food tariffs, etc. The state is always the biggest abuser.
You can have schools and healthcare without the state. The cost of having the state provide those services is all the things that come along with the state including war, forced starvation through sanctions, etc.
What does health care look like without coordination? Shaman and voodoo?
I confess that I'm struggling to follow your reasoning(s). Government is just coordinated action, no? So then what is the state? Just a coordination strategy you oppose?
A friend whom has since passed at their choice was in the system since birth. Computers and online friends was all he had even as an adult at 21. Most of it through FPS PC games with large battlegrounds and player communities. His high school kicked him out after enough times reformatting the school laptop so he could do what he wanted. No one to advocate for him. No chance any uni would accept him, and too far away from a community college. Plus this is when everything was mostly still pencil paper. He was a good man in the wrong place with the wrong support, and I miss him.
The internet to me was a blessing and a curse. In economic terms, it has granted me lots of opportunities I might have not otherwise had; in social terms, it has taken a big toll, significantly isolating me from the world, which I didn't admit until very recently. I remember a smart classmate at university who, one day, just stopped attending and sold his computers, saying something like "these little colored lights have turned me into something I don't like". Some days I wish I had done the same.
This reminds me of the saying in the psychedelic culture: “Once you’ve got the message, hang up the phone.” In March 2021 I made a similar decision regarding my use of Reddit. I’ve lost years doom-scrolling, but it’s also taught me useful things, especially regarding how to take care of my health. Now I feel like I’m getting more from books and I’ve transitioned to reading more of them. (Some of the reclaimed time also went towards caring for my first child.)
Not sure if he is an originator, but I heard this phrase from Alan Watts recording [0]
I recommend his lectures to all, especially if you don't want to take psychedelics. He mainly speaks about buddhism, altough he was connected to counter culture movements in the 60s and with LSD
This is me with a carefully curated set of RSS feeds and podcasts. It's not all monocles and self-described thinkers, but it does trend toward more contemplation and less scrollbait. I found I got more out of people who read the books and thought about them than from reading the books myself.
I wonder if there is a way to share your feed? Is there a platform for well-curated feeds, both on different topics, but even more so on different "mindsets"?
I feel like it would be very interesting, and I would probably even be ready to pay for someone to carefully pick interesting content, as I often feel like scrolling for hours only to find one great article (like this one was for me) is a huge price to pay.
This could even go for books. I try reading as much as possible, but it seems like 98% of books I find randomly recommended to me could easily fit into 10 pages, but instead they get drawn out into infinite repetitions because that's the only way nowdays to sell books. If someone was willing to charge me for a well-curated list of books with well written synopsis and a good indication of "Is it worth reading the whole thing even when you know the overall idea", I'd be a happy customer.
That sounds like Blinkist. They pitch it as a way to avoid having to read books, but it seems like you could use it to get the gist and decide if you want to read the whole thing.
Sounds like it, yes. However, re. my first question about sharing feeds and building a sort of community around it, I cannot really find anything interesting. But maybe twitter/reddit/HN are fulfilling this gap already, although not neraly to the extent I'm imagining here.
It's all right these days, if you're into mindless entertainment; they got rid of a lot of the more toxic parts (the_donald and co) and pornography is de-emphasized, likely will be removed altogether in the future. My feeds are now mainly poorly Paint-edited memes, cat photos / videos, and sometimes a bit of drama from the relationships or "am I the asshole" subreddits.
I don't actually do that much for mental stimulation anymore. HN doesn't do it for me anymore since three quarters are about technology or industries I'm far removed from, plus I never liked the SV culture of overhyping and grinding out startups to fish for early retirement. It's that culture that gave us the gig economy and that encourages the sigma male grindset bullshit where if you don't work 16 hours a day maintaining a healthy daily balance of soylent, melatonin, LSD and meditation you're not cool enough.
I'm with you on Silicon Valley being a grift, but be wary about mindless content consumption - even if it's not doomscrolling, you're essentially putting yourself in stasis and numbing yourself with a constant dopamine drip-feed, which can lead to not actually enjoying life. Basically, internet addiction is real.
5 years later, browsing r/all is much worse in other ways. Porn has been de-emphasized, but every other post feels like an outrage post designed to evoke anger, often without any proof, and it's enough to get people completely riled up.
Same hat, though I've mostly moved on to TikTok for my mindless entertainment.
HN is better because there are other internet olds here and more of the content is interesting, but as somebody with MS, the sigma male grindset thing gets under my skin because there's an undercurrent of 'If you do these things, you can ward off insecurity or poverty' and there are cases where that's just not true. Plus the ability to do those things often relies on external support, which for some reason just isn't mentioned when people talk about how they've worked to get where they are. (Which I'm not discounting; it's just that two people can put in the same effort and get drastically different results.)
It's a mindset for people in their 20s or people who can outsource most life activities.
I unsubbed from all default subs except “world news” (which I don’t comment in) and basically only hang out on my niche hobby/professional subs now. If you curate it and cut out the really toxic, highly-attractive subs that really pull you in, it’s a way better experience. Took me almost 10 years recognize the issue but I’m glad I did.
In many ways it is not. It's an endless source of procrastination and staying here too long without other influences will cause you to develop a most profound case of engineer's disease and blind you to the specific brand of groupthink here. Still, the level of discourse here is high compared to the worst of Reddit, and sometimes on topics I find highly engaging, which keeps me coming back for more (distraction). Just don't fall into the logical fallacy that any of us here are worth more than any other human being because (some of us) have more money, or that we're able to string English words together to form complete sentences.
I admit to meeting up with an old classmate in-person after spending weeks with HN as my main source of social interaction, and then regularly referencing anecdotes on old HN threads in the conversation and advocating for Linux/GNU for an OS; talking down big tech companies in favor of living frugally to contribute to open-source projects; and arguing in favor of working at startups versus big companies if given the chance.
I've since matured to avoid citing HN when referencing anecdotes (instead saying "I read once that..."), being agnostic about where one works (as long as it fits your personal career goals), and trying to also develop my worldview through well-regarded classic books.
I’m not sure it is much better, but moderation does have an impact on the tone of the conversation. New content pops up a bit slower, so it’s a bit less exciting. There’s a culture of sourcing information.
Moderation keeps most people 'civil' in a formal sense - avoiding dang action. I still quite honestly find the tone here mean and condescending a very significant part of the time. Every one of my subreddits is refreshingly wholesome by comparison. Of course, one can individually quit any subreddit they find irritating.
However, after begging my therapist for help with my doomscrolling, I deleted the Reddit app. We'll see if I end up resorting to blocking HN somehow.
I’m afraid I’m not going to be helpful here, but here’s how I quit Reddit: I simply did it. I realized I was done. I stopped believing I was getting something from it. In 2014 I quit smoking in a similar fashion. Just realized it was bad, didn’t smoke afterwards.
HN is still a great place to understand the ideology of Silicon Valley and its industry. I’ve never left Europe and this forum seems to give me an edge about what’s happening here.
Yes! I completely agree. I also notice more and more that I prefer a book more to the same old discussions online or the same old TV series and YouTube videos.
Reddit is one of the only sites I feel it's necessary to block on my home network. The rabbit hole is long, deep and dangerous for child/teen development IMO.
Awesome. If the aim is to protect tweens/teens from strange corners of the internet that could mess with their development, make sure to block discord as well
YMMV but I honestly felt much better nearly immediately. My life didn’t change in any macro sense - same job, same relationships etc, but baseline mood improved.
Again YMMV, and I’m loathe to say Facebook or Reddit or Twitter or anything is bad or evil or even addictive. I’m not a crusader. But for me going on Facebook for an hour subjectively made me less happy than not going on Facebook.
Facebook and Instagram are easy to diagnose: people post only their wins and their anger, so you end up feeling miserable and/or angry. It's like going to a party where everyone is richer and more beautiful than you, and they are all talking about politics. Same for twitter.
Reddit is more about simple time-wasting and dopamine hits.
I've forgotten what the alternative is like. Most of my hobbies, notwithstanding the minimal social media use, rely on the computer. I use it to write, to manage and search recipes to cook with, to use music notation or tabs, to game. I've had to deliberately schedule some low-tech/low-fi activities for myself but they are few in number: there is a barrier of inconvenience in the form of travel, cost, and timing for social activities. Therefore they are relegated to the weekends if anything. I wonder if historically after working hours and time with family, were people primarily engaged in social activity owing to the dearth of ways to amuse ourselves alone? I say this not really wanting or missing more of a social life than I have, I have my needs met with just family and occasional friends. On the other hand I recognize a kind of saturation point with electronic use, that if I rely on them too long it is to the detriment of my well-being.
All of which to say I have no idea how I ought to organize life around computers differently.
>> All of which to say I have no idea how I ought to organize life around computers differently.
I'll give you an example of something I've done recently which has made a big difference. Although, I don't have ideas on how to apply this to other aspects of my computer use (but open to ideas).
I listen to a lot of music. My teenage years/20's revolved completely around music. But I've gotten to a point where Apple Music/Spotify have become like Netflix to me - I have so much choice I don't know what to choose. I like to buy vinyl but it's expensive and not practical for most of my daily listening. I thought about it and realised that, for me, the time when music and technology merged for the best overall experience was the iPod (pre-Touch). I would mostly listen to albums I bought via iTunes (i.e. I cared enough about them to spend money and would listen to them a lot) and I checked out new music via Spotify (which was available in the UK in maybe 06/07) and then bought the stuff I liked on iTunes so I could take it with me on my iPod.
So I bought an iPod Classic on eBay. I deleted all the music I'd 'added' to Apple Music over the years leaving only my pre-streaming purchases (I also signed up for iTunes Match to backup and sync all my Bandcamp purchases + vinyl download card tracks). I've went back to my system of Spotify for new stuff, purchasing new stuff on iTunes, and syncing it to my iPod. It weirdly feels like a burden has been lifted having so much unnecessary choice removed. It's giving me a chance to get obsessed with the stuff I like again instead of quickly moving on to the next thing the algorithm throws at me. I highly recommend it. Currently thinking of ways I can apply this elsewhere in my life (e.g. purchasing TV/movies on iTunes instead of using streaming services but this could get very expensive very quickly).
Personally I don't rely on Spotify for recs, or even regular listening. I like finding things through online communities (including old ones), college radio, and in lesser cases the youtube algorithm.
My only purchases now are through bandcamp or at concerts.
Likewise. The Spotify listening I do is to check out albums I've discovered elsewhere before putting down some money for them. So typically new releases from artists I already know, recommendations from friends, or support acts at concerts I'm planning to attend. I should try to purchase through Bandcamp more as a first option before iTunes.
You've isolated yourself from the world man, if it wasn't Internet it would've been something else. If you really don't want to be isolated you can change that right now.
Agreed on the latter point. But on the former, would it though? Prior to the internet, isolating yourself from the world involved making a very deliberate and drastic life choice that completely changed your environment, like joining a monastery. Now though, a compelling and addictive alternate world awaits us in our pocket at all times. Indeed, I doubt either of us really cares much about this “conversation” or each other yet here we are wasting part of our morning shouting into the void. On that note I think I’m done with unintentional internet use for the day.
Spot on. Much, much easier to isolate yourself now.
In fact, I'll concede it is even possible that you have to work not to isolate yourself when, after dipping your toe into the internet, you trip into the rabbit hole.
> I doubt either of us really cares much about this “conversation” or each other yet here we are
One of the big problems is that we do care for the conversation on these forums (see also the classic "somebody is WRONG on the internet" xkcd), but we don't really care for each other. Relatively few of us end up actually meeting offline or ever establishing real relationships. So you get the illusion of socialization, but when the chips are down, nobody is going to care in your hour of need - which means you're indeed alone shouting into the void.
This was maybe less pronounced in the '90s, when internet groups were smaller and tighter. It's like sitting at some cafe on a small square talking to strangers - where in the past you'd be talking to the small cast of regulars, because the square was a bit hidden away from the main flow of people, but it has been since discovered by tourists, and now you're just chatting with passersby you'll never meet again, about topics you'll never do anything about.
> if it wasn't Internet it would've been something else
I think that is a big assumption to make for someone we don't know well. I do believe some unique experiences can have a huge effect on individuals and other experiences might not replicate the same results.
I mean, the internet IS (was?) my social life; I hate going out (see: overstimulation / sensory processing disorder), I didn't understand existing social activities (see: autism spectrum disorder), and most 'nerdy' hobbies that are then advertised are dominated by (often toxic) men that I don't want to associate with.
I mean I don't think I'm that far out there, these activities cost a lot of mental energy and leaving my comfort zone, and I like to think that thanks to the pandemic, a lot more people have become OK with being at home.
Anyway yeah, the internet was my social life, it's where I met my live-in girlfriend, it's where I spend my spare time, it's fine for me.
I don't understand these negative comments about what "computers/internet" has done to me etc.
Yes, there are certainly aspects of computers, the internet and especially social networking and instant-texting that have a net negative impact on our lives.
But this argument strikes me as a "I'm such a victim" argument. Surely if you allow some device to have such a massive negative impact on your life then this would be the case even pre-90s before computers and the internet became mainstream?
- Maybe you might have spent too much time hanging out at your local bar? - Perhaps you'd have been addicted to television?
The one area, where I wholeheartedly agree and recognize the serious dangerous of the internet and computer devices is in children. The threat of cyber-bullying and indeed, rather more subtle, the attention-seeking culture of always producing content at a young age is IMO, very scary when thought of in the context that these will be future adults who didn't know better. We need to guard against these enabled social pressures like we protect kids from smoking, drugs, alcohol and even to a lesser extend (i.e. it's not illegal) addictions to things like TV, video games and other behaviors that they might fall prey to.
I guess, summed up what I am saying is: It appears that there the internet has developed a predatory nature on one's attention that extends to threaten one's social status and reputation.
Where I disagree is that - as adults - we know better and can combat this with self-discipline and by choosing our friends/social circles wisely (I don't engage with friends who constantly text or post online. I'm happy to meet but they know not to expect my participation there).
Where I agree is that, children are vulnerable to this and must be protected AND TAUGHT how to treat / interact with the internet.
Unfortunately, since this is relatively a new thing in society. We have not yet developed a solid culture around what is acceptable and what is not. Just like it is inconceivable now to smoke inside a closed room, or someone's house, I do hope that in the future it would be inconceivable to upload compromising information/pictures to random servers in foreign countries. But alas, we are not there yet.
> Surely if you allow some device to have such a massive negative impact on your life then this would be the case even pre-90s before computers and the internet became mainstream?
The mechanisms of addiction and socialization are definitely more complex than "it made me do it". I'm not saying that without the internet I would have become World President, but the technology definitely nudged me towards indulging some of the worst traits in my character. It also allowed me to tolerate situations that, probably, I should not have tolerated - which feels good in the immediate but can actually postpone a necessary reckoning. And it heavily influenced my career choices, with mixed results.
> Maybe you might have spent too much time hanging out at your local bar? - Perhaps you'd have been addicted to television?
Maybe, but those are well-known behaviors, fairly easy to spot and compensate for. Bars are actually hypersocial and promote local connections and some degree of personal expression. TV is very passive and boring, whereas on the internet there is always something new to read or do.
It wasn't until the '80s that we got a fairly solid (and popular) understanding of the mechanisms of broadcasting, some 60 years since it had become mainstream; as you said, there are a lot of things we don't know about the new world of 24h online access. Undoubtedly my life choices are ultimately my fault, but "no man is an island" cuts both ways - particularly because I see a lot of my (bad) experiences replicated in a lot of my friends.
I see your point and think you have quite a valid argument there! Some of the things you said definitely echo with my experiences. For example, I do surf the net too much because I love new information. And perhaps without that access I'd be a lot happier focusing on actual physical things in front of me.
I guess it's not as simple as boiling it down to the individual's own self-control. To some degree maybe my stance is also biased in that I want to empower myself to be the one to reduce my time online.
There is a massive library of analysis on the effects of broadcasting, from McLuhan to Eco. Most of it was put together in the 60s/70s and became popular outside academic circles in the 80s.
> The one area, where I wholeheartedly agree and recognize the serious dangerous of the internet and computer devices is in children. The threat of cyber-bullying and indeed, rather more subtle, the attention-seeking culture of always producing content at a young age is IMO, very scary when thought of in the context that these will be future adults who didn't know better. We need to guard against these enabled social pressures like we protect kids from smoking, drugs, alcohol and even to a lesser extent (i.e. it's not illegal) addictions to things like TV, video games and other behaviors that they might fall prey to.
This is always an interesting discussion to me as one of the first kids to really grow up online. (It still weirds me out that my childhood is illegal now.)
> Unfortunately, since this is relatively a new thing in society. We have not yet developed a solid culture around what is acceptable and what is not.
Also unfortunately, I doubt we will until Gen Z and Gen Alpha grow up and start having their own kids. I didn't really start to reckon with the bad parts of growing up online and the ways that it may have shifted my development until I was in my 30s and starting to see the same behavior in current kids and realizing 'wow, that was f'ed up.' Right now, there just aren't many adults who can speak to spending a shit ton of time online as pre-teens, and kids can smell inexperienced bullshit a mile away.
The other possible outcome is that the curriculum/culture for this will be written by people in power who have no idea what being a child on the internet is actually like + it will be written as a political football, so it will be completely ineffectual.
> Surely if you allow some device to have such a massive negative impact on your life then this would be the case even pre-90s before computers and the internet became mainstream?
Yes, but we are not living in the pre-90's. The internet is the TV/bar/etc. for us now. Some of us recognize that we not only gained but lost something as well.
In many ways I agree with you. I would like also to return to simpler times. Especially insta-texting (whatsapp) etc. SMS was fine for me to organise a meetup and then talk in person.
I guess my stance is more kind of to protect my mental sanity, to try and make this a "self-discipline" problem that I can control, and hence reduce my exposure/time online. That suits me but I do agree that to some degree there needs to be a wider societal change and I do agree that it can't all be placed on the individual to be super strong mentally when the internet is now literally a life necessity for operating in society in any dimension.
Do we really want a return of drinking at the bar after work?
I think a lot of social validation once came easy by mere virtue that we lived so closely to one another, and suburbia flipped that on it's head. Once it was the case that social activity required a) transport, b) money, c) time, it has become increasingly devoid from weeknights. We could remedy this by changing physical structures, but we won't.
In the U.S. we never had a "local" (Public House, Pub). But from what I understand, it was a nice way to mingle with those not necessarily in your social class, "industry".
The DMV feels to me like the only place now where I share a seat with people not like me.
Will highlight from your comments that alcohol consumption appeared to be more of a scourge before the internet. Before the world of personal leisure opened up, and after the creation of disconnected suburbia, I would guess drinking at the bar with workmates was a common extracurricular.
> in social terms, it has taken a big toll, significantly isolating me from the world, which I didn't admit until very recently.
counterpoint: my entire social scene, and all of my best friends, came from a subculture that I found on an internet mailing list, on a listserv run by the guy who made the Apache webserver. A bunch of my other friends came from IRC.
If it weren't for the 'net, I'm not sure I'd have any good people in my life at all.
I often wonder how I would have made a living and a good life without the internet. I finished high school in 1994 with little career inspiration, landed in a generic business degree that held little interest for me, but it was at that uni campus I discovered the internet in early 95.
I immediately found it exciting and grasped how transformative it would be, and quickly got to work learning web development and finding material and communities related to my interests (mostly obscure Australian rock bands). It's been the platform for my career ever since, and has also enabled me to go deep learning about some unusual health and emotional challenges that had afflicted me since early life, and enabled me to make profound changes to my health and wellbeing, leading to the place I'm at now, with a solid career, great relationship and a wonderful young son.
When I think about the person I was and the path I was on when I finished high school, it's hard to imagine how it would have turned out well had I come of age in a different era.
Which is not to say life has been easy or simple; quite the opposite, and the internet has no doubt made life more complicated and challenging in many ways, My life has had several major ups and downs that probably wouldn't have been as pronounced without the internet. But I still have no doubt at all I'm in a much better place than I'd have been without it.
It’s nice to hear about the positive side of internet and all these stories people share here. Usually it’s much more about the negative aspects like one of my own personal posts I wrote from the middle of lockdowns about a year ago, touching upon the distractions of the internet and how it’s been slowly re-wiring my brain: https://www.lostbookofsales.com/age-of-distractions/
Since I moved to a smaller town here in northern Finland from the heart of Germany, thanks to the internet I feel no less connected to communities, teachers (MIT, Harvard, etc. as I’m doing my masters degree) and friends than before.
You have to balance the negative and positive sides and control yourself. I think it’s a huge net positive though as becomes obvious from this thread.
I have a cousin much older than me. Everyone thinks he is weird, and he is indeed. Absolutely no one understood the things he do, why he does a particular thing but I found him pretty fascinating. Once in a particular talk session with him, we discussed about the upcoming thing called Internet. This was 1993 or 1995 — about the time Internet was a buzzword and soon to be introduced in India.
Besides all the talks, I will never forget what he told me. Something in the lines of — anyone from anywhere can do anything they want for anyone anywhere. I would spend hours reading the magazines he bought, and tinkering with his computer.
It wasn’t until 1999 that I was introduced to the Internet and (maybe) another 5-7 years for him. Well, I felt right at home on day-zero, and I knew that changed everything for me.
Damn, that is actually pretty trippy to imagine. I can engage in transactions with basically anyone on the planet... That was part of what used to excite me about crypto.
I was 11 in '99 too, we had the internet since 97/98. I spent my time making dumb websites and playing Half-Life mods online (tf/cs/sven coop). Great times. The one strange thing I often think about is that I don't remember any toxicity, nothing like it is today in online games.
I know you say it without any offense, but don't call them "dumb websites". They were the thing I miss mostly about the old internet, specific niche websites made by people with passion for every need.
- Specific websites for Half-Life mods run by a group of people from different parts of the world with a creative name (now you have to go to a subreddit or discord with a generic name, because of SEO?)
- Specific website to follow all the news about my favourite soccer team, visiting every hour or two hours to see if they updated something. Now Twitter (Instagram later) has stolen that urgent sense.
- Am I waiting for a new movie? Let's update the forum that I regular visit to see if the studio released a new trailer in .mov format and different resolutions. When it's done, send the link to my friends over MSN. Now it's on YouTube and I get a notification.
Those dumb websites were the best and I am glad people like us spent their teen years creating them. Not only because I learnt a lot (and now I am a professinal thanks to them), but also because I think we give enjoyment to a lot of people around the world just because of it.
Honestly I think there’s still a lot of space for simple HTML niche interest websites today, based on my experiences with various hobbies and topics. It’s surprising how many things out there don’t have any “one stop” pages, requiring anybody who’s just getting started to have to synthesize from several different places of varying accuracy, completeness, and relevance.
I'm sure there was plenty, judging from ancient IRC logs that drift by occasionally. But maybe those were saved because they were still the exception.
The kids from back then were also raised in a directly-connected environment (the only non-direct communication was via snail mail, or "mail" as it was called), so they'd get corrected much sooner for violating the social contract in some way. Most children quickly learned to keep their unkind thoughts to themselves. The kids today are growing up with all manner of indirect connections, which both have fewer opportunities to correct behaviour and even if those corrections do happen, they're unlikely to have as much effect (if any) as real-life direct feedback.
Also, the Internet wasn't "popular" back then so if people were bored, they'd hang out and troll somewhere else, like a mall or a parking lot. The Internet was mainly inhabited by serious people back then, I guess.
That's my two cents, at least. In today's currency, not inflation-adjusted.
Same age, but I didn't really get into online communities until the early noughties. I got into programming working with a gaming community to build out their website (building phpBB themes and mods) and building a matching service, and then it went from there... There was definately a lot of toxicity in that community though (even though we had maybe 20 regular members), so I think you were lucky :)
I remember the world before the internet. Full of rumour and supersition and gossip and people you go to for certian knowledge about things. Lots of people outside, all over the place. climbing trees, riding bikes. Filling the spaces. Now you come home from being on it all day working. your family are all on it. don't talk to you, bark if you interupt them. You can access all the facts and know everything. I kinda hate it. Here I am on it.
“Full of rumour and supersition and gossip and people you go to for certian knowledge about things.”
The more things change…
We’ve recreated that online. There was a brief golden age when only the early adopters were online with visions of a digital utopia and now it’s just like real life but crazier.
The same thing will happen if we go to mars. It will just be the same stuff just on another planet.
The people of Mars would likely be somewhat different from the people of Earth, since they'd be so heavily influenced by whatever idiosyncrasies they inherited from the first colonists.
If there are genetic propensities to whatever would make someone healthy enough to travel to Mars, intelligent enough to run the machines, yet disconnect enough from Earthbound society that they wouldn't mind leaving the planet, that is what Martians would generally be like.
funny you say this. i was reading about peri wigs the other day. and apparently washington didn't wear one. he fashioned his hair that way. I guess he didn't have syphilis and wanted to fit in.
Growing up, I had a friend with a desktop PC in his room and I was dumbstruck and intrigued by the idea of being able to stay all day on a computer, gaming and IMing and surfing. Now we are all like him, sitting at a desk the entire day. Sometimes the desk follows us.
Without the internet I wouldn’t haven’t met some of my best friends or discovered my passion for filmmaking. I’d also probably be still using a lot of questionable language and espousing some pretty whacky ideas like I did in high school. Honestly the internet improved my life. I get what you’re saying but it’s sort of an old take and lacks nuance IMO.
> I’d also probably be still using a lot of questionable language
All sorts of cultures, online and off, involve members policing the ingroup for transgressions against the internal culture.
Language isn't "questionable", its usage is. There's no such thing as a bad word.
The culture of the internet (and, as a subset, that of 2022 mass social media in the english-speaking world, which is itself a subset of internet mass social media) is mostly not because of the internet, but because of the participants and the state of the wider world. The internet isn't responsible for wokeness, it's just the medium through which this particular human culture phenomenon travels.
>it’s just the medium through which this particular human culture phenomenon travels.
That’s exactly what I’m saying. The internet exposed me to other ways of thinking and more diverse people. I’m not sure what all that other stuff is about.
We can acknowledge that the internet has done great things for people while simultaneously acknowledging that it is deeply altering the fabric of society.
I’d never disagree it’s altering the fabric of society. But I’m not sure I’m prepared to say it’s a net negative, which the comment above me definitely implied.
I could totally relate. who couldn't? Didn't that lack nuance? I'm only just past 40, and I don't take the current for granted either btw. I guess it depends what your counting in your net. Maybe we lost something.
People used to make jokes about me because I was on my computer all day. This was back before it was big, when people just used it for AIM instant messenger. I never understood how they could not be amazed by it. I'd imagine how amazing it would be if computers could be faster, portable, wireless.. how much could be possible. Now all those people are on Facebook and have their phones glued to their eyes. I still use computers and devices a lot, but having spent so many hours lost in cyberspace I have a certain dislike for using computers without getting some value back. I also find staring at screens in the middle of conversations to be annoying, while most of these people don't have a problem with it. It's a weird irony. I kind of hate it too, especially all the misinformation that spreads nowadays
> The next day, I had the TV on in the background and the evening news program was just starting. At the start of the bulletin, they gave a quick outline of the stories they were going to cover. Among those stories, the news anchor read something to the lines of “an internet user saves the life of a young woman in distress”. Then they cut for an ad break. I was very excited to hear the actual news story, but suddenly, my mother called out “dinner is ready!” and insisted that I come and sit down to eat. I got distracted, and I never did hear the full news story (ha!).
It would be really cool if it were somehow possible to pin down the time this was aired on TV and identify the full bulletin.
I wonder if the author remembers the rough time period this happened within. Even a span of months to years doesn't produce an intractably-sized search space.
I honestly don't remember which exact year this happened. I can give you a super wide time bracket to make sure it's in this range, which is between 1998 and 2004. In actuality it was probably closer to 2000-2002. It was aired on one of the big French Montreal news channels (TVA, TQS). It was probably TVA because we watched the news there most of the time. The new bulletin aired ~6PM. They used the French term "internaute" to talk about an internet user. So you might try keywords like "internaute sauve jeune femme". I'd be curious to watch it if it's somehow possible to find it. I don't need to contact the person and I don't need a "thank you" though. I just hope that wherever she is, she's doing okay :)
My story pales in comparison to the author's but having access to the Internet in my teen years probably saved me from a life of full-on mediocrity or worse.
I grew up in an extremely rural area of the Midwest. Town so small it didn't even have a stoplight. One school served three villages, grades K-12. You were considered rich if you didn't buy your groceries with food stamps. As a teen, if you didn't have a job (which was impossible to get if your parents didn't give you a car), the only things to do with your free time were watch TV or hope one of your friends was willing to pick you up and hang out. Nobody from there went to college. The brightest ones went to trade school.
The best thing my mother ever did for us was buy a computer we could barely afford, and then eventually subscribe us to dial-up Internet once it came to our town. I always liked computers and electronics but reading about things in books and magazines only takes you so far. It was until I could actually _look things up_ and see what others were doing that I became halfway proficient at computer hardware, operating systems, and programming. My crowning achievement while I was still living at home was downloading two dozen floppies worth of Slackware Linux and managing to make it dual-boot with Windows 98.
Today I live in a decent-sized city, have two decades of tech career under my belt, a very solid financial situation, and a great family. My parents did their best but the mid-90's Internet (and beyond) is what got me here and I'm forever thankful for that.
Great essay. I also got on IRC in the late 90s and ran into someone who was feeling down. They didn't say they were about to kill themselves, luckily, just that they were quite depressed. Somehow before the everyone got online I had a number of quite deep conversations with people.
The internet now is a double edged sword. You can learn a lot from it, you can give or get help, you can do things that you couldn't just a few years ago. But you can also get helplessly addicted to things you find there, spending years looking for a dopamine hit that you perhaps thought was on the other side of the sword.
The thing about the Internet is that the ratio of high-quality educational and informational content to complete garbage is fairly low. I couldn't say whether its falling or not, but it seems to have been rather higher in the Internet's early days, before the rush to commercialize everything in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In particular, social media engagement algorithms have gotten out of hand, it's kind of a problem. They're designed to be addictive and you have to actively resist that kind of thing.
Currently I'm leaning towards adopting a much more rigorous attitude towards time spent online. My short list is : (1) have specific goals for each online session, (2) don't get sucked down distracting rabbit holes, (3) spend at least as much time reading books as reading online content, (4) try to spend as much time on physical activity as on mental activity, (5) don't just be a passive absorber of information, try to create things as well.
As far as online social interaction as a substitute for offline human interaction, I don't think it's that great of an idea, particularly for children and young adults, but some people do appear to benefit greatly from it in some circumstances, so I remain neutral on the topic.
I think there's just a lot more of the Internet these days. Much more garbage, but much more high-quality content too. And the same engagement algorithms that can drive you down into rabbit holes can also lead you to deep wells of high-quality educational content on whatever topic you choose.
Today's Internet is whatever you want make of it. And to me at least, that's what makes it so exciting.
Very personal, well written story. Thanks for sharing it. The author frequents hn. I wonder what their take is on this making to hn?
At the risk of oversharing this has so many similarities to my own story, only time shifted a little earlier, pre-web. Most things were telnet,ftp,uucp,netnews.
I had read an article in Byte Magazine about the Transputer, so wrote an email, I think this was literally the Unix mail command, I wrote this email to the author and we chatted a bit about the Transputer. I'd stay up late at night, calling into a long distance Unix machine on the internet. It only lasted a couple months until I was busted for the phone charges.
You can still basically email/chat with anyone in the world.
I was surprised because when I posted it yesterday, I got a few comments on twitter, but today my inbox was full of comments on the blog post. I was afraid to post a story with many personal details like this, but I figured, I've been self-censoring too much recently. I have a story to tell, and I'm sure many people will be able to relate.
I had a similar experience. I watched a YouTube talk about using stacked k-means to do deep learning without artificial neurons (deep learning without neural networks). I found that super fascinating and I had a bunch of questions, so I managed to find the author's email (public because he was an academic) and we chatted about his research for a while. It was amazing being able to talk directly to the researcher.
I was also a single child of a single mother who wasn’t doing well. I didn’t consciously make them same calculation, but did.
Continue to make the world a better place by just being you.
*edit, We really should foster a better culture of making these kinds of contacts. Even if occasionally we get snubbed I have found most people to be delighted that someone is interestin their work.
The famous reply to the introduction of Dropbox [1] here on HN in 2007 comes to mind:
"1. For a Linux user, you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."
I am happy the Internet is here. I feel that it was inevitable, and I also believe that we are just starting to emerge from the "rough teenage years" of teh Internets Tubes.
Maturity can be a real bitch. We'll be seeing a lot more guardrails and walled gardens. People that have become accustomed to (and thrived in) the "Wild West" nature of early Internet, will throw tantrums, but it will be for naught.
I definitely couldn't do my work, without the Internet, a persistent, high-speed connection, and a whole lot of folks that contribute to various sites out there. I often have to google even the most basic stuff. Because of the Internet, these sidebars seldom take more than about five minutes. I do it several times a day.
I have a Facebook account that I barely use. The place is a cesspool. I just keep it, because I need to help support a technical initiative that has a fairly prominent Facebook presence.
What struck me most about her story, is how little help her mother got. Sadly, I am familiar with exactly that type of mental disease, and know how destructive it can be, and how treatable it is, nowadays.
I had a much more stable upbringing and family life than the author, but one area that I can relate to is being incredibly bored as a kid - most of my friends lived across major roads or outside of walking distance in suburbia. The internet and all it offered was an endless fountain of entertainment for me. I really don't know what I would have done without it.
Neat, I love this. The internet hugely changed my life too, and was utterly fundamental to my development as a person. I wonder if I'd ever take the time to write a story like this, but I think I wouldn't be able to resist going into way deeper detail haha
Then I'm guessing you probably would go into way deeper detail. But I suspect if you let it sit on your computer for a few days after writing it, coming back to it you will see the parts you needed to hew out and could then post something more succinct to your liking.
I can tell you that I've been thinking about writing up this story for a couple of years, but I kept self-censoring because my blog is mostly about tech, and because I was still afraid of the judgment that comes with having a schizophrenic parent.
In the end, I decided that I do have a story to tell, and I don't care about the judgment. These things shouldn't be stigmatized, the stigma is what prevents people from getting help, and the only way to remove the stigma is to talk. So I wrote the story up one evening two weeks ago. Then I had a few friends proofread it by sharing with them on Google Doc. Then I finally decided to post it.
Because my blog is focused on tech, I focused more on the tech angle when telling the story. I knew that would appeal to my audience more, but I think it's only fair, because tech has been a huge part of my life. It's a huge part of what makes me get up in the morning.
I hope his mother eventually received the help she needed.
I know it can be difficult as a child to see through the flaws of a troubled parent, it's difficult to feel more than resent when you have to live through it night and day - an occasional glimmer of their vulnerability might open your eyes as child, that they are just another human struggling like you, but it can be fleeting.
I've been in a similar but far less extreme situation. With time it's possible to appreciate what was essentially a dysfunctional yet supportive parent, she was clearly a well intentioned, good person trying to do the right thing. As much as her mental health troubled her, she clearly cared far more than many better positioned parents out there.
One thing I have learned as a parent is that you grow with your child. I’ve also learned that some people simply should not raise children, let alone by themselves.
I hold much more sympathy for the author. Hopefully all involved have gotten the help they need, but in perspective this person did little to change it sounds like and deprived the author of a loving household. Those who survived violent upbringings from parents understand.
It was a strange mix. She was a very loving mother when I was a kid. She told me that I was a wanted child (not an accident), and that I was the most important person in her life. I have good memories from when I was 4 to 8 years old. Things took a turn for the worse when her mental illness surfaced, but it was always like, she really wanted to be a good parent and she really tried her best, but the mental illness made that difficult/impossible.
Thank you for making me go back and look. I was reading this from the perspective of a young boy too. For whatever reason I visualized myself when I was reading this.
I specifically didn't mention gender in the story because I figured that it would make it easier for more people to relate. When you write a story, you get to choose which aspects to highlight on or not :)
It was like world of warcraft but in reality. say for example there was a rumour that someone called 'smokey' could catch an eel. and you wanted to catch an eel. someone would say. Smokey can catch eels. So you and 5 pals would walk 6 miles to find Smokey. You'd sit in the sun and he'd share his stories of how to carry out the task. Then you'd go to the said location at night and fulfill the task. etc. It was fun.
That's interesting: It's like we've introduced "spoilers" into almost everything we do. I mean, if you have some discipline you can still do things "spoiler-free", I guess (specially if it's not a job or particularly dangerous), which I agree sometimes presents a great learning opportunity and completely different experience.
I went to school in canada and I'm not sure I'd call it "low" (especially when you're a broke student) but I don't have any number to compare it to. I went to uni in the 2010's and I remember it being like 8-10K/year or so for engineering.
What's the average price elsewhere? I think in the UK it's mostly paid for through taxes?
Heartwarming story, I would only say to be careful about diagnosing close friends or family with mental illness based on internet research. Even non mental illnesses.
Good advice, much needed for a lot of people. I’d say I’m a victim of this. Once people think you need some sort of help, they never let you live life as a normal person again, they’re never just “cool” to hang around and talk to ever again. It takes a lot of effort to find new people who dont look at you the same way or to weed out the smarter friends (who get over their obsession to help you) you have from the rest so you can feel comfortable socializing with them.
The rest of my family have armchair-diagnosed my father as being on the autism spectrum. I’m fairly sure his lack of responsiveness is due to his hearing loss and the plain fact he doesn’t like his family as much as the friends he plays cards with every Friday!
For people growing up in the 1900s, the local library served a similar function of releasing one from suffocating local life into the wonders of the wide world.
from someone whose life was changed by internet I'd expect they would use at least readable font for their website, not that HN comments would use better size...
as a working class kid growing up in a German village of 800 people I credit the internet for a lot of the stuff I learned. From coding, to learning English, to talking to people from other walks of life, and so on. That together with the fact that I could go to a good school with a healthy mix of people from other backgrounds I'd credit with 90% of what got me to university.
Today there's a lot of negative discourse about the internet and the post-truth world it creates, but people have to keep in mind on the other hand it had and has an incredibly liberating effect for a lot of people.
Same here, but from Slovenia, equally a small village.
I think people forget the incredibly huge role internet has in terms of openly available knowledge.
In my opinion the majority of negativity around internet is from the general public and about the websites that the general public uses aka. facebook, twitter, instagram, ...
This has became even more apparent when I started teaching computer science to students and adults. The most noticeable was their inability to use Google, actually being able to find information online.
Techy people quite often forget that, since we're so used to solving problems.
Imagine programming without internet... <insert stackoverflow joke here>
The fact that both of you could grow up in small, non English-speaking villages and write such beautiful English is a testament to the power of learning English through the internet. It's amazing how natural and clear non-native-speakers' English feels when they've learned it as they're interacting with the wealth of discourse on the internet. People who haven't learned foreign languages (looking at you, fellow North Americans) won't quite appreciate what a huge achievement this is. (To be able to write and communicate freely in a way that feels native.)
Also the same here - I'm from a little village (~2000 people) in the Czech Republic.
I remember how (thanks to the internet) in the late 90's, I started listening to English music and playing video games without knowing any English.
A few years forward I had much better English than all of my classmates, but without putting any work in.
Then, I learned Spanish also online and moved to the Central America.
Anyway, I still wonder if my old classmates aren't better off in that small village since they don't really know about the huge and complicated world that's outside of their country. Having a few friends that live a few hundred meters from your house and working as a plumber seems liberating in a way.
> I made the cold calculation that as painful as my life was, it was probably better than rolling the dice with the child protection services.
Yup. I too decided at age 11, choosing to live with the less bad parent.
And shortly thereafter, those decisions were made for me, resulting in the state putting me into foster care. Somehow I avoided the worst; while the 1st family was pretty much what you'd expect, I later lucked into a good family.
--
I wonder how many of us there are. I've known so many runaways, beaten kids, sexually abused kids, kids with broken parents. And that's just in my wealthy, prosperous city. I can't imagine how much worse it is every where else.
I also marvel that somehow some of us find a way out, while seemingly most others get sucked into the abyss. So much human potential lost due to poor circumstances and stupid luck. It fills me with deep sadness.
And I wonder what the difference is. How are some able to escape their fate? If we can identify those success factors, maybe we can maximize chances for success. Could even be small measures, like how we now have suicide prevention hotlines, and resources for victims of human trafficking.
--
I had many, many people help me over the years. People who had no reason to help, but did nonetheless. I call them my angels. People like a little league coach (who'd drive me to practice), a youth pastor (who mentored me), the foster family that raised me, etc, etc.
As society becomes harsher, more coarse, more dog-eat-dog, I worry that other lost kids won't have their own angels.