I miss when being a geek online was a messy trip

Every day, it's getting harder to imagine a time when you actually had to go looking for the stuff you loved.

I was doing some spring cleaning on my laptop when I came across some comic book-related bookmarks I've forgotten I've saved. A wave of nostalgia hit me all of a sudden, and I found myself longing to go back to a time when being a geek online meant stumbling into weird little corners of the internet and rubbing virtual elbows with fellow nerds while discussing why Batman would beat Emperor Palpatine with prep time.

I used to haunt the old CBR (Comic Book Resources) forums to talk about my favorite covers with fellow fans or roleplay pop culture characters in Traitor Games. I would make friends by signing the online "guestbook" widget of a dude's self-coded GeoCities site dedicated to the X-Men. I joined a fan club for an indie comic called Banzai Girl and exchanged emails with a lovely gentleman that gave me tips on my writing.

It was a period of discovery, a time before everything is delivered to you by an algorithm. I guess I just miss the old geek internet being this journey you had to go through before Google got their search results down to a millisecond. It meant the corporate bean counters hadn't figured out how to steal our shit and sell them back to us yet. That rawness feels like a millennia ago now.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I want Ye Olde Internet back. Some things might have been better in my day (and some were a lot worse), but I can't deny that geeks are eating good these days. It's easier than ever to connect with your favorite creators now. It's also easier for niche interests to find an audience. But I'd trade that ease for the feeling of it. The era of less polished, less optimized, and more spontaneous geekery on the internet, before we all became "content creators."

Maybe that's why I still prefer blog posts and articles over video essays or reels (though there are still some channels like Comics Tropes I absolutely love). And maybe it's the reason why I still stubbornly (and sporadically, sorry) maintain my tiny corner of the geek internet—hoping someone out there will find an article funny or useful and strike up a conversation in the comments without feeling like we're selling something to each other.