At the same time, one of MY hobbies is blooming. There are thousands of sites dedicated to it, new productes emerge on daily basis, there are tools, communities, the interaction I couldn’t dream about back in 80s or 90s. I can enjoy it with people from all the world, I can add to it and see other fans commenting on it. It grows, it becomes better with each new year.
I guess it begs for the question, whether the subjective choice of a hobby is enough to judge by as vast medium as the Internet…
I suppose it cannot. I guess my views are largely based on my own experiences.
I would still like to bring up another online activity, which is gaming. That has surely seen a huge change in culture and how the most popular games are played. 15 years ago one could show up on a public server, and after a while get to know the regulars. That served as a good stepping stone to creating online relationships.
With the advent of matchmaking, such interaction is no longer the norm. As such one has to go through the effort of finding communities, that they might want to be a part of.
Back in the days games were meant to serve for long. These days, new titles appear all the time and often disappear before they can mature enough. It limits the possibility to build a healthy, long-term fanbase/society and/or maintain equaly lengthy relationships.
But that’s video-gaming problem, that only seeps into the medium that is the Internet, much like the state of the modern politics, or moviemaking. The Internet is influenced by it, but is not responsible for it.
