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*                      ###  Why Gopher?  ###                           *
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*                          July 19, 2020                               *
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I enjoy being online.  I like the ability to easily contact friends and
family over the Internet.  The Internet has certainly allowed us to 
make the world a lot smaller, and it's allowed us to express our thoughts
to anyone and everyone who will listen to or read them.

It's a blessing and a curse.  We have tons of information available to
us in an instant, and we can be inundated by a slew of thoughts, facts,
and disinformation curated to us by algorithms.  Algorithms that learn
our preferences--what we like and dislike--and then serve us content and
advertisements based on those preferences.  That's not necessarily a bad
thing, but it can create an echo chamber.

I don't fault people for monetizing the Web.  Machines, data lines, 
software, content creation, &c; there is an expense for providing content
to a user.  Most of that content is "free" to access with advertisements
helping to pay the bills and salaries.  Some are more successful than
others.

Then there's the whole expectation of designing a pleasing website or
include picture(s) with text when publishing content to the WWW.  Not
to mention the peppering of ads in-line with the text you're trying to
read ("we" don't want to have to pay for content, after all)

The gopherspace is devoid of that--just content, and you have to dig to
find what you want or stumble upon someone's experiences.  It seems a
bit more personal the the WWW.

Maybe it's a slight rebellion of what the Web has become: an ecosystem
more interested in feeding perpetual outrage (can you believe what 
$person1 said about $person2??) to put ads in front of your eyeballs,
or maybe it's the sheer fact that I just want to type out my thoughts
without having to be concerned about adding multimedia content to my
site in order to feel like I'm getting value from paying for WordPress.

In any regard, I'm here in the gopherspace for me.  This is my little
segment of the Internet.  I stumbled across SDF.org because someone
mentioned that they were exploring the gopherspace in a BBS post, and
I was intrigued.  My own exploration lead me to SDF, and I've come to
appreciate the community here.  I'm happy to pay my dues to allow this
space to continue to operate, and I hope others join in on the fun.

I continue to explore and try different things, and I think that's the
beauty of this type of community.  Try different things, ask questions,
help others, and build relationships with people who have similar
interests.

So that's why I'm here, and I'm glad you took time to read.  Feel free
to drop me a line at drelcott[at]sdf.org.