Spymac – After all these years

So, Dad helped me to finally get logged back on to Spymac.  I first found Spymac in the early days, in 2004.  Then it grew wildly, and collapsed in on itself.  Friends and acquaintances scattered to the four corners of the Internet, as they fled the demise of the Community.  Some appeared on Open Salon, photos on Flickr, or other hangouts.

It had been years, literally, since my last login.  At least three, from what I can tell…  It almost seems so simple, just go direct to the login link, as opposed to the “Login” button on any page.  (http://classic.spymac.com/login.php)

Been poking around the old stomping grounds.  It’s really good to see the embers are still glowing.  Gadget Don (and/or others) seem to be doing a good job keeping the Community from fading off in to eternity.  It certainly must be a labor of love.

Of course, I never found a place quite like SM.  After I departed, I wandered aimlessly.  Facebook was the up and comer, and I finally had signed up.  Now, seeing the SM Community once again, FB doesn’t hold a candle.  SM allowed real discussions (and arguments) on a wealth of topics; hardware, software, trivia, nonsense, or news of the day.  You could actually have a “conversation” on just about any topic.  You could ask for help, or just babble.  New friends almost always seemed like “real” friends.  There was a great bunch of people who “lived” in SM.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  Not that my FB friends are not great folks, but you (or maybe it’s just me) don’t get to know most of them like you did on SM.  (Of course, there are a surprising number of those old SM friends who are now on FB, too.  It’s a small world… )  My early FB quest for friends mostly involved building a gang, or Mafia, or something…  And I do certainly have a large number of family, real-life friends and colleagues on FB.

Then there is FB in general.  I liken it to a Twitter machine on full volume, pumping out an endless stream of noise, spam, and an occasional nugget of news or interesting event in a friend’s life.  The problem, unless of course I really don’t know how to control that “noise”, is that you can never really keep up with anyone or anything.  Not, at least from a ‘friends’ perspective.  It seems like it’s all or nothing.  You visit their “wall” and it’s snippets of life at that moment.  I don’t take the time to scroll back, and thus likely miss an awful lot.  And there is no real “mingling”, it’s just separate silos of information.

Anymore, FB is just my Farmville playground…  Yep, I contribute to the spam I complain about.  Oh well, when in Rome…

But in the end, it sure would be great if the Spymac Community can rise from the ashes with TLC from some devoted folks behind the curtain.  Here’s keeping my fingers crossed to a new beginning.