June 4, 1983

Blogger didn't exist in 1983 (or did it?) (I didn't have a computer in 1983) (also, friends) (I didn't have any friends in 1983).  I might have actually had a blog in 1983, & it almost certainly would've been mainly about the Beatles, Elvis Costello, David Bowie, & comic books.  Not necessarily in that order.

Imagine how distracting it would have been to have had the internet in my youth!  At a time when I certainly never got anything done, I certainly would never have gotten anything done.  Oh shit my little brother & I would've constantly fought about using the one computer we had.  Which would've somehow been connected to the television, because we were poor.  Do you remember when people used their televisions as computer monitors?  I'd be trying to figure out how to find music videos & David Letterman clips while my little brother just wanted to watch wrestling all the time.

Almost certainly this would've happened: I'd have a blog.  I would write something nasty about my little brother (almost certainly) or some other member of my family (a probably if not a surely) & my little brother, who was a snitch extraordinaire, would have found it - he would be reading my blog mainly to find something to make fun of me within - he would have noticed some snark about him or someone else in the family - he would have printed it out - since almost no one else in the family would be using the computer for anything else except to watch wrestling - & he would have shown it to my mother, to try to get me intro trouble.

Would I have gotten into trouble?  Nah.  Maybe my oldest sister would have tried to lecture me, & maybe her husband would warn me that he would "kick my ass" if I did it again, but at that point they had ceased to be any big influence in my life.  Mostly the blog would confirm to them that I was "weird" - the most damning charge to be leveled at me at the time - & I would be less likely to go to the family gatherings I was increasingly unlikely to attend at this time.

One thing is certain: being an unpopular, somewhat introverted kid, I would've spent a great deal of time on the internet in 1983, possibly finding a decade earlier the same pseudo-community I would find on the usenet in the mid-1990s.  I would be up well into the night, not, as I did in the summer of 1983, watching late night television, but chatting with people far away - especially while everyone else was asleep & I could use the television as a computer monitor without having to fight my little brother for it.

There was a moment now when I thought I might try to recreate what a Gary blog from 1983 might be, but it would probably just be about what comics I bought that week.  June 4, 1983, was a Saturday, & I generally got my new comics from a bookstore on Fridays, so Saturday would be the day when I would talk breathlessly about the things I had purchased the day before.  That's not the kind of magic I can recreate these days.

But I can imagine it!