An Internet Thanksgiving

"What are you thankful for, Daddy?" asked Peter at dinner this weekend. Thanks to the omnipresence of Thanksgiving as a cultural touchstone here in America, that this question is propping up a week before the actual death-to-large-fowl event isn't surprising.

"My family," I replied, with a genuine smile on my face. Of course this is true. But it's also a cheap answer. It serves the purpose, making Peter smile and allowing the conversation move on to less saccharine topics. But hours later, I realized that my real answers, the ones one layer deeper than "family, food & shelter," were harder to come up with. I know what all the answers are supposed to be. But in my heart of hearts, the thing I'm thankful for every day are just plain embarrassing.

The Internet

"Honey, the Internet's down," calls Jessica from the basement.

"No it's not," I declare. My geekcred on the line, I run to the basement and check the DSL modem. It says everything's fine. I walk over to my computer and probe the router, everything seems fine. I reboot everything I can think of. My heart rate rises. The white walls close in on me. The air thins.

No pings. No trace-route past three hops away.

Red with rage, I call Verizon. An hour of verbal demolition derby ensues, culminating in a call to the Cable company to reinstall cable-modem service.

I'm not addicted to the internet. That implies potential for withdrawal, as if I could grab a paper cup full of methadone and be just fine in the morning.

I can imagine an apocalypse in which I am required to learn how to manufacture my own gunpowder and raise chickens more readily than I can imagine a world without the internet. Not only would I be unemployed, but I would have no useful skills whatsoever. I would have virtually no good friends, not the kind who share my interests. Forced with facing only my own thoughts and the blank page for more than a day at a time, my cognitive faculties would be slowly eroded by acidic secretions from my hypothalmus which can only be tamed by the continuous input of information.

While there are many other things, particularly as a gamer, that I am thankful for, most of them come back to "The Internet."

"Home"

My sense of home should be firmly rooted in the place I live: a small town in rural Massachusetts which I have lived in, off and on, for 37 years. But the honest truth is I take it entirely for granted that my children are growing up somewhere where they can walk the streets not because they are some how preternaturally safe, but because they personally know every third person they see: every shopkeeper and librarian and firemen and gas station attendant and the waitress knows them by name, and likely went to school with me. But it's not really where I feel "home" because I just don't spend that much time there.

Where I spend time is here, out in the cloud of information, connected to a few hundred of my closest friends and colleagues by instant messenger, Skype, Twitter, email, tokbox, message boards, Facebook and yes, games. My shopkeepers and librarians are virtual. My closest confidants sit at the end of never-closed IM windows.

Perhaps this is sad. I find it wondrous. I feel like my life is overflowing with rich and real human contact, even if I only see many of my friends a few times a year face to face. But when I do, the conversations aren't awkward, they flow from moment to moment and topic to topic as effortlessly as any other conversation with good friends.

Without a doubt, Gamers With Jobs has become my primary domicile. Not just the actual posts and discussions surrounding this page, but the people, many of whom have become dear, dear friends. It's destruction would feel no less painful than my house burning down, without the benefit of insurance.

Podcasting

Over three years ago, my entire experience with podcasting was hitting "play" on a few websites that offered streaming audio. I didn't own an iPod. I owned a crappy 256 megabyte MP3 player I dragged individual files to, and it never occurred to me to drag a podcast onto it. That was until I started listening to "Gamers With Jobs Radio," the predecessor to the current Gamers With Jobs Conference Call. When GWJ Radio went dark with Russ "Fletcher" Pitts departure to The Escapist, there was gaping hole in my weekly running schedule. Where once I had had these anonymous friends who talked to me while I challenged the barrier of turning 40, now there was silence.

My first show was Episode #2, following GenCon in August of 2006. And while I haven't made every single show since, it's become the anchor of my week. I've made the Conference Call with more regularity than I've made it to Church, where I'm the guy responsible for passing the cup around.

The reason for this seeming madness is simple: how many hours a week do you spend talking with your best friends about the things you love most in the world? Until the conference call, the answer was "hours?" That 29 million of you find it interesting, infuriating, or entertaining is still unfathomable to me, but I to say that I'm thankful for it seems a nearly taciturn sentiment.

Play

It's not novel to suggest that the internet allows for people with narrow interests to find each other and develop communities. In my own case, my tastes have never led me to feel like I was the only guy around who played games. As a kid, in college, in graduate school, I was always able to find a game group.

That was before the seizure. Once the floppy chicken became a regular dance routine in my repertoire, my physical roaming range became more confined than that of a red-tailed fox. If I couldn't walk there, I basically didn't go. I fought hard, and "not driving" never stopped me from doing anything I wanted to do -- except game. Hauling my hot 486 to Quake II lan parties or my miniatures to a convention is problematic when you're on foot, bicycle and subway.

The rise of internet gaming, particularly post Counter-Strike, has completely changed my gaming life. Face-to-face gaming is now about being social, not about getting my gamer-fix. And while there are still gaping holes in the catalog of what I'd like to be able to play online, those holes close with each passing XBLA release, and with each hardcore game designer who migrates to Facebook as a platform, not a novelty.

To the meal

Every Sunday and most evenings, I verbalize my thanks to my family. I give thanks for them, for my community, for my friends, my church, my (compared to most of the world) profound lack of poverty and extraordinary comfort.

Thanked, and taken for granted.

But not you, Internet. This Turkey is for you.

Comments

Nice article.

I understand the concept of giving thanks, but it does seem a little trite when one sees it as a trending topic on twitter.

It seems to me that if one only wheels the phrase out on thanksgiving, one's rather missing point. (THat's not to say I'm suggesting your child's question wasn't heartfelt.)

I don't understand the 29 million bit; downloads, listeners?

1Dgaf wrote:

I don't understand the 29 million bit; downloads, listeners?

Hyperbole?

I am thankful for GWJ. If your real-life friends don't care about video games, get some internet friends.

The real question is: How will you learn to raise chickens and make gunpowder if there is no internet?

Don't feel bad Rabbit, the Internet does great things for humanity alongside delivering all that gaming and porn. If one of those things is making it possible for you to provide for your family then all the better. It's one of life's few examples of having your cake and eating it too.

1Dgaf wrote:

I don't understand the 29 million bit; downloads, listeners?

Hyperbole

It's more like 24 million, and I'm thankful for each and every one of them.

Certis wrote:

It's more like 24 million, and I'm thankful for each and every one of them.

That's quite a number.

GWJ's has grown on me, like some; at first you don't realize it, and when you finally notice, it's already too late.

This epiphany didn't quite materialize until a few weeks ago, when I got Google Wave invites and it made more sense to share them with the fellow goodjers than with real-life friends and family (aka the wife).

Hobbes2099 wrote:
Certis wrote:

It's more like 24 million, and I'm thankful for each and every one of them.

That's quite a number.

And also a gross over estimation of the actual numbers we get.

Fine, it's 19.4 million.

GWJ has been a daily stop for me for a long time now. While I'm usually the quiet guy lurking in the corner, I really do appreciate all of you and I'm thankful for the friendships that have been cultivated by this site. Cheers!

Butt pats all around!

Although my online presence is very limited in comparison, I also value the social connections I've made online, some through this very portal.

Thank you all for not being dicks.
Thank you to the GWJ crew for your always enjoyable work; written & verbal.

Happy gaming over the holidays!

For the last four years or so this site would be the siteI spend more time on than most other sites combined. I'm just sorry I didn't really become an active member of the community until about a year ago, boy was I missing out.

mmm internet (and turkey), I could go for another thanks giving. I like that though, its not an addiction until there is a chance to be deprived of it. Internet is like air, it should always be there, discussion of it not being there serves no purpose, IT WILL ALWAYS BE THERE.... right?

HedgeWizard wrote:

Thank you all for not being dicks.

Gamers With Jobs: Where Wheaton's Law is the highest authority.

=)

Deep, entertaining, and beautifully put together. Thanks Rabbit. This was a great holiday treat.

Thanks for the read, Rabbit.

Great Post.

The internet will never be one of thing you can pick when you play the "what would you take to a desert island" game, but it's always the first thing that pops to mind. Outside of credit card commercials, though, it just wouldn't be feasible enough to suggest.

Internet is great. Internet sucks. Long live internet.

Nice article.

The internet is so pervasive that it's easy to take for granted. It's only in those blood chilling moments when it goes way that we realise what a big part of our lives it has become. What did I do before being able to find the answer to any question or technical query by simple typing it into a small box and hitting the enter key?

I've always been interested in other cultures and people from other countries and the internet allows me to listen to, read about and kill dragons with, people from all over the world.

Podcasts. It's difficult to think back to the days when the podcast window on iTunes was empty and unused. Now it continually refills with the best most interesting 'programmes' you could wish for on subjects I care about (I used to listen to a lot of BBC radio. It's all high quality stuff but they had a lock on what subjects were covered. You got what you were given.)

Lex Cayman wrote:

I am thankful for GWJ. If your real-life friends don't care about video games, get some internet friends.

I have great real life friends but none of them are the slightest bit interested in games. I always have to resist the urge to go on about the fire in Far Cry 2 or the quests in Fallout 3. When I'm sat there biting my lip, and discussing TV or movies rather than games, it's good to know there are people who share my clandestine interest in all things gaming.

Though my postings are far less frequent, I still appreciate my GWJ buddies. Online and in the forums.

Seriously though, nice article, rabbit. Ever since I got broadband in 2001, I've spent more of my spare time on the internet than any other entertainment medium (TV, movie theater, outdoors, etc.). These days, even my job is done online, so I would also be unemployed if I suddenly permanently lost the internet. Thankfully, I'm pretty sure it's here to stay.

Timely. My internet connection began to die late Tuesday evening. It would connect to the Internet, but I was getting a trickle of my usual bandwidth, and I basically couldn't do anything online. Comcast finally replaced my cable modem this morning, and I'm back in business.

That was TWO ENTIRE EVENINGS without online gaming Despite the fact that I had games I could play locally, I still felt like something was missing. Can't tell you how many times I thought about sitting down in my chair to check something online, or actually clicked programs that wouldn't work without a functioning 'net connection. It's as much a part of my daily routine as eating and sleeping, and I'm definitely thankful for the Internet.

Heh, we were going around the table yesterday, talking about what we were thankful for. Of course I said I was thankful for my wonderful wife and relatively well-behaved kids (entirely my wife's doing). And thankful that I have a decent job in this economy.

But I was thinking, yeah, and I'm thankful I finally got that 750GB hard drive installed so I can play the two dozen games I picked up during the Direct2Drive 5th anniversary sale. And I'm thankful that my 8800GTX still plays games well b/c I wouldn't want to have to justify a new graphics card (and probably a new mainboard, proc, memory, and Win7 at the same time) to my family. And I'm thankful for Steam weekend sales. And thankful, of course, that Left 4 Dead 2 (PC) is so awesome...

Then my daughter is like, Dad! I asked you three times already! Can you get me some more milk?!? (I said relatively well-behaved...)

Certis wrote:

Fine, it's 19.4 million.

Wow 19.4?! That's amazi.... just kidding.

Actually he meant billion. I may be the only IP address registering from China, but I broadcast the show over the Great People's Central Broadcasting Station, which blocks out all other radio programming in China at lunchtime every day. The people are very thankful.

Chairman_Mao wrote:

Actually he meant billion. I may be the only IP address registering from China, but I broadcast the show over the Great People's Central Broadcasting Station, which blocks out all other radio programming in China at lunchtime every day. The people are very thankful.

See? Repressive regimes are useful for something!

HedgeWizard wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Actually he meant billion. I may be the only IP address registering from China, but I broadcast the show over the Great People's Central Broadcasting Station, which blocks out all other radio programming in China at lunchtime every day. The people are very thankful.

See? Repressive regimes are useful for something!

This year, I'm thankful for the internet, Rabbit's thoughtful writing, and that Chairman Mao is helping GWJ take over the world. Oh, and my family and girlfriend and stuff.

HedgeWizard wrote:
Chairman_Mao wrote:

Actually he meant billion. I may be the only IP address registering from China, but I broadcast the show over the Great People's Central Broadcasting Station, which blocks out all other radio programming in China at lunchtime every day. The people are very thankful.

See? Repressive regimes are useful for something!

Shhh. Don't talk about them that way or Certis will bust out the ban hammer.

You meant China? My bad.

Fantastic, rab. Man, I wish I'd written this article. I emphatically agree with every ounce of it, especially this:

Perhaps this is sad. I find it wondrous. I feel like my life is overflowing with rich and real human contact, even if I only see many of my friends a few times a year face to face. But when I do, the conversations aren't awkward, they flow from moment to moment and topic to topic as effortlessly as any other conversation with good friends.

Seems there's something in my eye. Ahem.

I am thankful for finally taking the time to open itunes and download GWJ conference call. I now spend my hour long drive with the game talk I have wanted.

I am also thankful that the conference call is 164 episodes in. Started with 162, and have found that I needed to stop to listen to 161, which I stopped to listen to 160. Thankfully I did not regress all the way to 1, but I am sure that is in the cards.

I have enjoyed the site off and on, but now find myself here daily. Harkens back to the days of DAoC listening to our guild banter when Certis and Elysium were nobodys.

Now I am hooked.