• Arkhive@piefed.blahaj.zone
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    4 days ago

    The loss of a third space, digital ones included, often feels like loosing a loved one, because in the end you are loosing the connection to people you might not know, but we’re still glad to see around. Spam crouching at a guardian in the tower, or doing donuts around a blueberry in the cosmodrome, are genuine human moments. They are the same as chatting with the barista, or petting a stranger’s dog in a park.

    I hate “IRL” because it implies a falseness to digital interactions, but those are still “real life”. Destiny unironically helped remind me there’s real humans on the other end of digital interactions. I have lifelong friends across the world because of that game.

      • Arkhive@piefed.blahaj.zone
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        3 days ago

        OoooOo. I like those. In a class I took on this, we used “meat space” as sort of a joke, but also in a lack of a better term way. The author Legacy Russell speaks at length about this in their book Glitch Feminism. Russell streamlines it to just using AFK to describe non-digital interaction because she is coming from a life where digital interactions where the default as they allowed for better senses and explorations of self and identity. It’s a great read that informed a lot of my own thinking on digital third spaces and re-humanizing the internet.