Fifteen Years is a Long Time on the Internet

[Luca]

The internet isn't too old on a geological timescale, but the ability to have a fully-developed conversation with another human person, to whom Googling the answer to a question was never an option not on the table in their lifetime, is quite significant. For the websites which still have the strength of motivation and blessing of continuity to do so, many will take the opportunity to engage in a bit of self-congratulations after a period of, say, fifteen years of continued life. But the internet has changed a lot in the last fifteen years, both tonally and culturally, such that taking one's self in a vacuum and pretending all is business as usual comes across as a bit daft to me.

The Refuge has long operated on the idea of independence and separation -- the idea that whatever was going on outside of our space, within our space we retained agency over our pocket dimension, detached from life's woes. Such was the promise of the internet: A separate world within which you could create your own. Yet, slowly, the internet's priorities would change. As corporate commodification took over, open-sourced projects became rare and free services like web hosting became unheard of. The internet is increasingly no longer a realm where someone creates and idea or tool for the benefit for friends and strangers, it is where one creates a premium subscription Discord bot to pad their résumé while applying to a job analyzing bulk private data for Facebook.

Those trends are hard to ignore and harder still to productively deal with. Even for those who would still like to uphold a world full of possibilities, why does everything feel so dismal and draining? The answer, of course, lies in the very question. "Everything." The world is full of everything and, in a world full of everything, we forget that it used to be full of nothing. In a world full of nothing, you have the ultimate creative license, the most-complete permission set to make whatever thing you want with whatever attributes you think it should have. Yet, in a world with everything, we force our own ideas and visions into existing frameworks, platforms, standards, and monopolies that dilute and disfigure them to the point of being unrecognisable or never being made at all.

So, for this particular self-congratulatory anniversary post, I'd like to invite people to take a break from their various platforms, podcasts, and social media. Free yourself, if only for today or any day you read this post, from the opinions, expectations, and influences of others. Take a trip outside to a wooded area, if you can. And let your mind clear of all the societal bullshit that you have been carrying around. Vacancy acquired, use the mental space to imagine what you would most like to see in this world, or what you most like to think about. Regardless of your current abilities, could you express or represent that thing with creative writing, art, music, or coding?

Wouldn't that be a better use of your time and mental energy than whatever social burdens you've been carrying around? Then you should absolutely pursue those and disregard the rest. Tell your burdens that you don't believe in any of this shit anyway, and fuck the consequences. You only live once, so you might as well start doing it. If what you want doesn't exist right now, today is the day to start making it. That is what the internet is for.

Happy Refuge Day, 2008 - 2023

[Emily]

I remember the first time I joined a forum. I was 11 or 12 (I think? It was somewhere around that age anyway) and we'd only just gotten the internet a few months before. I had somehow found my way to a Nintendo fan community, and they had two Zelda groups- an old one that had been around since the late 90s and a new one that they were hoping would attract more people, as some of the major personalities of the old group were inflammatory types. The new forum wouldn't load on my computer, so I joined the old one, and somehow this dumb pre-teen child was chatting with people who were in their late teens and early 20s.

It was such a weird experience. I grew up in a hyper-conservative area and had never met anyone outside of that belief structure. And over the next two decades or so, I've become a massively different person than I likely would have had it not been for the internet. Being exposed to other people and making friends and having shared interests with other people drastically affected my life, and I found myself later trying to run communities so that I could help provide that safety net for others.

Something that scares me is the idea that, if I'd been that kid on the internet as it is now, I might never have found a nice community. All these social media platforms have so many algorithms designed specifically for the Tenno to suck someone into a spiral of echo chambers to reinforce what they had previously believed. I might have gotten into alt-right Youtube or found my way to a weird subreddit hive where I wouldn't have gotten that space to grow and learn.

That feeling of barely dodging a bullet just by virtue of when I was on the internet is always in the back of my mind. And it's why I'm really happy CalRef is here. I've only been around for – oh wow, almost six years I guess- but it really does represent a space where we try to promote the openness and freedom that the internet used to represent. And it's hard to cut through that cynicism and jaded exterior that the internet has now, but I'm happy to keep working for it with everyone else.

I think it's a great idea to try and cut down on the distractions and things that are outside ourselves on the internet and try to get back to just creating things. I'll take this message and this hope and try writing more, and maybe go on a walk later.

Happy Refuge Day!

[Catherine]

Lately I've been thinking about how much of my life can be traced back to a decision to pick up a leaflet at the back of the church I went to when I was 12. Through that leaflet, I joined my first online forum where I met my wife and many people who I am still friends with at 30. That leaflet and that forum indirectly impacted where I live and work and who I know now in "meatspace".

It is also, in a roundabout way, what lead me here. In November 2021 my dad started chemo, and I was trying to think of things I could do to spend time with him from another country when I remembered a game someone from that first forum used to play in 2006. Searching for that lead me to NationStates, where I then found a telegram about Refugia and with it, a discord and forum link.

Initially, CalRef was a place where people were kind and I enjoyed chatting, but also a place where I could have some peace from everything that was going on irl at the time. However, it quickly became my main online community, a place that unknowingly helped me through all of that, somewhere I've made good friends, and a group that has genuinely changed my life over the last 18 months.

When I met Nak, they gave me a notebook they'd made and bound, which I've been using since to do postcard collage type art. I guess that makes it CalRef collaborative art! In honour of Refuge Day, I used this postcard I got at an interactive art installation I visited in February. Those little blue strings were some kind of nature/tech fusion that was imagined in the exhibit, and this scene is exactly how I picture CalRef would be if it were a physical place: colourful and combining nature and tech to make the most magical and beautiful place. I had to add a lil Dot to the scene too, of course!



Happy Refuge Day, and thank you for being such wonderful people. I love y'all. <3

[Natalie]

My earliest online hangouts were video game message boards back in the mid-'00s, places like GameFAQs that were probably not the right venue for 10-year-old me and where I never felt able to connect with the older crowds. It really wasn't until I found an internet radio site in my teens that I developed an online social life to make up for my lack of an in-person one. Hanging out in their chat all day, making friends, learning from people all around the world with different experiences and perspectives and careers. That's what opened my eyes to the potential of the internet to make connections I'd never be able to IRL. It's why I later sought out another online community, and eventually jumped from there into CalRef. Each of those places shaped my habits, my beliefs, my values, even the way I speak, and each of them brought me into contact with people I'd grow very close to and care deeply about. There are myriad little decisions and coincidences that could have nudged my path away from finding any of these communities, and I think a lot about the negative side of all those places and the mistakes that were made there, but regardless of the regrets I hold, I'm glad those experiences have brought me here.

Sometimes, what disappoints me about the modern internet just as much as consolidation and commodification is the premium placed on our time. I think about infinite scrolls and autoplaying videos and algorithmic recommendations and I wonder how much time I've spent on these that would have gone back into a hobby or a meaningful social interaction in the past. Maybe the increasing inability to search and filter the internet is a factor as well - you're made to feel that you have to read or watch or save what you find while you still have access to it.

I want to spend more time and energy here, doing and talking about and making things of substance. We should make the most of what we've built and what we're capable of.

Happy Refuge Day

P.S.: That postcard is amazing, Cat.

[walrus]

My time on internet forums is not as long as other community members, and has existed solely within the hypercondensed, corporate internet era, but I can still appreciate the Refuge for its determination to provide a haven for all, weathered forumgoers or greenhorns like myself.

NationStates was the first place that I'd find my own internet forum. I was 12 or so, interested in geopolitics and countryballs and avoiding the outside world. I had wanted to join other social groups before on places like Amino, Discord, or Reddit to a lesser extent. My parents restricted my internet access, however, as I was a child and this was not the same free, unrestricted, but unregulated internet. I was an easily manipulated child and part of me has to thank that my potential slips into alt-right rabbit holes were prevented not by small circumstances, but by rational adults. But NationStates was the big break for me from Vine compilations on YouTube. I discovered it from a Drew Durnil geopolitics video right around the beginning of the COVID pandemic, and I spent most of my time on the website interacting with other internet people on the forums. Around the fall, my parents were accepting that I had to be online, so I was eventually given access to Discord. Not quite an internet forum, but it's close enough and it's what I've got.

Flash forward a few months, I've been existing as a 12-turned-13-year-old on the internet and enjoying interacting with others without having to pretend to be someone I wasn't. I speak and have fun with various NSers, mostly from TRR, make small childish social mistakes, persist. Until I decided to join CalRef slightly over two years ago. I wasn't aiming to cause trouble, but as 13-year-old boys are, I was inevitably troublesome. I clashed with others unintentionally, made yet more childish social mistakes, until a few months into my joining, I spoke with at least Luca about my community presence. There/then, they acted in one of the kindest ways I have known, and believed that I could become better.

And, I hope, better I became. I turned 14, meaning I was no longer in CalRef on unofficial, doubtful grounds. I did my best to improve how I interacted with others, seeing to it that I shelved any lacerating or unwelcoming aspects of my still-forming personality. I did all I could to put my best foot forward and be on good terms with other community members which I hadn't been the kindest child to. I'm relieved to say that I believe that I am in good standing as a community member and good friends with many wonderful and inspiring hearts here. I must thank at least Luca, and possibly Emily (I'm sure I frustrated her also), for giving me the opportunity to better myself and find myself here.

I must also thank Calamity Refuge for being the place that it is. A dedicated group of dedicated people who do their best to provide a safe space for others. A most noble goal for only a handful of people to work towards, and one that is most appreciated by all under its umbrella of independence. Thank you to everyone who has contributed towards this goal in CalRef over the past 15 years.

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, [people] can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

~ Margaret Mead

P.S. I spent this Refuge Day and the past three weeks along the Maine coast, kayaking in the sea and visiting many islands. I saw many lobster boats and visited a few harbors but I went to many wooded areas and mostly escaped society. I returned with a renewed appreciation for my surroundings and spirit to help others. I may have pre-empted this Refuge Day but I am grateful to have even momentarily dropped meaningless societal burdens. I also encourage everyone to go to the wilderness and enjoy independence.

[Luca]

I think I poked around on Runescape forums a bit in like 2004, but never in a lasting way. I was bouncing around online games on miniclip for a while during the two days a week I had access to the internet. Then, on a summer trip to my relatives in Illinois, my late uncle was playing this kinda weird furry frogger-like game called Varmintz, and then there was another called Rebound (which I think the company renamed to Ricochet for whatever reason), and his wife played I think it was called shapeshifter, which was a progressively high speed puzzle-matching game.

They were things to watch, so I watched them. And on the very last day of one of this trip he said, 'you know, you can get these yourself'. I said 'oh yeah?' He said 'they're on RealArcade' (which was basically 2004's Steam/Epic). Just as soon as he said that, my mother's special friend materialised out of the void to whisk me away from the room as fast as she possibly could. No idea why, maybe it was in response to that namedrop or maybe she would have done it either way. But I think about that that narrow moment sometimes, because it was how I found the Geneforge games and how I found the Spiderweb forums. It took me a few years after that to realise, hey, you know you can just google spiderweb software and find their forum and oh my god there's a Geneforge 3 now too? They're making 4???

I made an account in like January or February of 2007, but I didn't actually stick around and try to have a conversation until two weeks after my 14th birthday which was later that year in September. I had just seen a meetup that spiderwebbers had posted about in the general board, and there were something like five or six of them there. I thought 'wow'. Here I am on a farm in fuckall nowhere, but holy shit using the power of the internet, these people made friends out of nothing and that means so can I. It'll take years, but it'll happen. It did, and it did.

In 2007 I was an annoying kid and the mods on Spiderweb were up their own ass. What was cool at the time was to expect forum posts written like peer-reviewed scientific papers, and that's a big ask for a 14 year old who likes the "post" button. Sudanna tolerated me which was nice, and I guess I got in trouble enough times that Vergil invited me to CalRef. At the time, CalRef was the sort of counter-culture spin-off community for people who still really liked spiderweb games Avernum and the other ones. Like many others who answered the big recruitment push at the time, I hit mod the same day I joined, which was a totally responsible thing to do. But it worked out I guess because it gave us what every teen and tween really wants -- a title! Huzzah, onward to rule the world! It is a bright day!

It also really helped that in the months before I remembered that Spiderweb existed, I was really into creative writing, and I was staying up late those nights to just some up with random stories on my laptop because it was fun to write. Little did I know, I could have been doing that on the internet with other people who also liked writing, and were much better at it than me. So I did, and Jewels (who was an admin here and a primary writer for FT and ANWO) sorta nudged me in the direction of being a little better at writing and a little less abrasive.

I still was and likely ended up causing more fights than I stopped. And I really feel for all the people who had to deal with me both then and even now, because rose tinted glasses also leave regrets. I certainly have no shortage of them. Still, all of it was good, not that I didn't get angry or sad or stressed. I loved the people here, even the ones that despised me, because they were my family and collectively we could work on things together and make things together and play games together and that was great.

As far as I remember, which could be inaccurate but I don't think it is? But the first Refugi meetup of people who did not grow up in the same town together was when I moved to Denver and Zoe visited my apartment sometime between June and August of 2012. And that was really cool! Meeting a friend who I had only known from the internet was awesome, and Zoe was awesome. It was a little bit of a hassle because we lived like a half hour away, but we went over to each other's places a good bit. A few months later, we went to go see Vergil who was visiting Colorado Springs on a school trip. That was also great because he was also awesome.

And those were really the ice-breakers, I think. We were all at an age where we were increasingly capable of mobility, so more trips started taking place and more people started meeting up independently. Also Sylae/Keira moved in with me at the end of that year, which was certainly brought a notable shift in how things worked. The next year was 2013 and although it didn't start out that way intentionally, we ended up doing a Year Five (tm) get together, and that happened to take place in our apartment with like five or six people. I don't think we ended up making a chart of meetings until Slarty did one on Spiderweb and we added in a lot of connections, and later on I cleaned up a smaller CalRef version just for us.

I hit admin the next year (2014), and we kept making and doing things (namely Minecraft servers in this era and various Steam things). Zoe moved in the year after that (CRC Calamity Refuge Commune era), and then we moved in with Sudanna and friends two years after that (CRCE (East)), which was cost-effective but short lived, as there were way too many people in a confined space. I don't think the site was too active during CRCE because a lot of stuff just happened in meatspace at that point.

I didn't try venturing out of the online CR/SW sphere until 2017 and when I did, I think I realised more and more how good we had it, just based on how the rest of the world had developed independent of us. The outside world was not nearly so close and interconnected, and their community spaces were not nearly so, uh, free of nazis. And while it was nice to get a reminder of what the alternatives were, it was nicer to actually have the option to go back and not deal with that.

Anyway things happened and now we've somehow timeskipped to it being two months before I turn 30. I'm way older than Jewels was when we joked that she was the ancient mom of the site. But the site exists and has activity and people in it. Somehow we survived every other SW satellite community, saw the rise and fall of social media giants -- some of them anyway -- and changed our activity focus URL and servers a dozen times. Some things happened along the way and it all gets to a point where there's too much to talk about and I'm not even sure I understand it.

I started writing a CalRef total history post long ago while I still remembered most of it, but eventually it got to a point where I didn't really know how to continue without incidentally offending people, and not really knowing if all the details really mattered to anyone anyway. But a lot of the older people were ready to move on with their interests. Relationship troubles made me one of those, too. We hadn't really done a big recruitment push since 2014 and CalRef had been slowly declining in activity since then. At some point at the end of 2017 Keira asked if I wanted to take over CalRef and I said sure.

The over-arching principles of staff have always been that the mods are responsible for the well-treatment of members, the admins are responsible for the site continuity, and the arch-admin was super in charge of site continuity and atmosphere. The atmosphere was pretty caustic and dead, and continuity looked pretty shaking, so naturally I planned a bunch of relatively radical reforms to take stock of the now-sprawling network of twenty-five domains and sub-domains, trim them down to what was needed and used, update that software, find things to do, start recruiting again. And the response was pretty much a naive Ship of Theseus argument. Would it really be CalRef if I did that, said some prominent mods at the time.

And the answer is basically yes but also no, which is the same thing it's always been. Because the CalRef from 2008 was certainly hard to recognise in 2012, and the CalRef from 2012 was certainly hard to recognise in 2016, and the CalRef of 2016 was certainly hard to recognise in 2020. You know, that's just kinda life. I'm sure it'll be true again in the future too. As a relic from the OG times, basically my thinking is that my job is to and keep CalRef's core values alive. What is that? I don't know. A place you can meet and talk to friends in a relatively safe space, there's some lore, themes, and iconography hooks, there's some dedication to FOSS ideals and being community driven and not profit driven. But a community of friends that do and make things is like, what the most important part is, and the rest is just cool decoration.

We're at the five year point in my Arch-Admin tenure now, and empirically I feel like I've accomplished it, which is to say that CalRef now is larger than it ever was before, we certainly had more activity than ever before even if it wasn't really on the forums. I recognise from a number standpoint it's good. But I also have lingering creeping doubts which I think about every single day of my life, about whether this was really the best I could do, if this is really being true to OG values, and if that sort of thing is even worth pursuing. The stress of running this place has been more than anything else I've done in my life because it meant so much to me when I needed a place to fit in the most. So that's what keeps me going and motivated despite living as much of my life since registering as I had up to that point.

I want to do better, and I want people to be able to have the thing that I did if they need it.

[Catherine]

It's been so interesting reading about how people got here!

I'm glad for all you did to keep CalRef going, Luca, and I'm glad for all the decisions that lead to us all being here in 2023.

I've been thinking the last day or so about what you said in the first post, about creating what we want to see in the world. And the thing is, I'll dabble in creative stuff and help out where I can, but I'm not creative really. I'm not a writer or an artist or a coder or a musician the way many other people here are.

What I do feel deeply about though is people. I know I joke about how I just turned up and was an extrovert who talked a lot, but I love listening to others talk about the stuff they love. Really what I want to add to the world is not so much art or tools, and more just a space where people know someone is out there and listening to them, and believing that they're capable of being good and doing wonderful things. It's something I really love and appreciate about CalRef.

So yeah, if you ever do write that history post, I will definitely read it and listen to the details! And if not, either way, I will try to keep up with all the other wonderful things everyone here creates!

[Narwhal]

My first foray into forums was when i was 11. I was barred from playing an FPS game because i had stole money from my parents to play it on internet café. So with the meagre connection i have at home, i visites the game's forum for a 'substitute'. Little did i know that it would lead me in a tight community (we even have our own Facebook groups, befriend each other, sending FarmVille invitations, and some launched their own forums, including me. But damn, myBB was fucking cool back then).

But for whatever reasons i stopped visiting the community, and it died a long death.

Fast forward in 2017, i stumbled upon this game called NationStates. Me, being out of school for almost a year at that point, and bored as hell, took a plunge on it. My first region, The Western Isles, was where i roleplayed and, i owed them so much for teaching me how to talk and write in English. And my current job is partly because of that English proficiency. I lasted there for 1,5 years, but i'm still there even though i dont participate in roleplay anymore. True community makes you stick around even though what makes the community coalesced is not there anymore, because it is about the people who made up the community.

Then, i think in 2019, i remembered Luca making a circuit around regional NS discords, and TWI was one of them. It is certainly an out of ordinary things to do, and Luca is still the only people i know for making that rounds. But that wasn't when i joined Refugia.

It all started with Conifer, a region where i was a diplomat from Forest. I went in, and, boy, that was one of the most memorable time i ever had on NS. Just the people around, including Luca and Emily, was really welcoming to the point i dared to joke around (and several of my jokes made it into the pin! What a hall of fame it was!). But then, the founder, Vukmire, vanished. I think it was at this point, either Luca or Ath, or Suba, invited me to Refugia. It was a small region, barely 50 nations, and not long after Luca decided to close it and the discord. I think my nation stayed, but i forgot about this period since it coincides with the first outbreak of COVID, and thus the heavy restrictions.

Then somewhere around late 2021, i think, i found that Refugia is active again and i joined the discord. That's where i am right now i guess. And a really convulated way to join Refugia, but it never occurred to me that Refugia, would grow this big.

Still, i'm not much into CalRef, since i'm barely outside of NS. But i'm glad, and impressed, by what Luca and others have made this community into. And for the technicaly stuffs, as a sysadmin myself, impressive to keep datas from years back, and keep it running until now. It is a thankless job, yet it is the one of the most amazing thing i found on this community. Tenacity.