Apparently, this will be my 34,459th post on App.Net. I remember when I thought the number of ADN posts would eventually supersede my Twitter posts (before I started regularly purging them).
But now, it seems that App.Net itself will be purged. But, as you know, nothing on the Internet ever truly goes away. I can find stuff I posted to the Internet more than 20 years ago thanks to Google and things like archive.org.
Those things cannot really capture the community, the relationships that were built and destroyed on app.net over the last five years. Perhaps some of that community has reformed itself in other places.
I've been around long enough to have seen online communities of all kinds come and go, starting with bulletin board systems of the 1980s. So even though this particular one is clearly going away, that initial spirit we engendered will live on.
It seems the world is hell-bent on dividing us all. That certainly played itself out on ADN. It's going to take continuous effort, by all of us, to ensure that doesn't happen. We can have our differences and still have common understanding and goals.
It's very easy to look at ADN as a failure, and it was in many ways. However, it advanced the social experiment. In that way, it was a success.
Clearly this stream of consciousness is just that, with thoughts all over the place. So many things I am struggling to put into words. So many feels, which doesn't help me write.
I really hope that you all will help continue the social experiment and not lose faith just because ADN is going away.
Thank you all for reading through this. If you want to continue the conversation, you know where to find me. I refuse to say goodbye, as I'm sure we'll meet again somewhere, somehow.