A lot of people in their 30s are thinking a lot about the early 2000's.
That was one of the first things a writer, game designer, and podcaster told me. It was easier to be online at this time than it was in the past. You can play triple-A games on a cheap phone if you have a cloud gaming subscription. You can create an online presence and even publish videos for free. Just a few clicks and a few days away from seeing your PC gaming hardware at your door.
We're both hopelessly longing for a LAN party. She's so much so that she's going to write a book. It's a collection of amateur photos, many upscaled through artificial intelligence, and short essays on a time when gaming meant desktop towers, energy drinks, and being physically present in some awkward places. She has been thinking about it for more than a year.
There are some reasons for that, like remembering when you were a teen and listening to emo music. The internet is falling apart for a lot of people who grew up with it. It gave me a way to talk to people and make connections when I was younger, and it was so important to me.
It is the opposite of that now. You have to present this brand, this manicured identity, online in order to have meaningful interactions with people. The earlier era of tech when things were a little rougher around the edges is what appeals to people.
The 20-year nostalgia window, the isolation of COVID-19, and the decline of truly do-it-yourself consumer tech were some of the reasons why a late-night message from Merritt K's went to nearly 100,000 likes. I want to make a coffee table book with pictures of LAN parties from the 90s and 2000s. "Do not steal this idea, it's mine, please publish this."
The UK-based publisher Read-OnlyMemory is publishing this. Hundreds of eager fans heard from hundreds of eager fans. Some had to dig through old media in hopes of finding something new. There were still image folder on public web server. The San Antonio Spurs playing StarCraft on a plane next to their NBA championship trophy is a famous meme, but was taken aback by the lesser-known photos she received.
The composition in some of these is so good that it's accidental. They reveal a lot about the era in terms of the fashions, the food, the drinks, and the interior decor. I think that made a lot of other people feel the same way.
Digital photography was one of the things that the people who frequented the parties used. Untrained photographers shooting with Y2K-era gear in dimly lit spaces gave the photos a lot of charm, but also made many of them impossible to publish in high resolution print.
It is possible to upscale images up to 600 percent. A controversial art fair win was claimed by another artificial intelligence, and famous 1896 films of trains were upscaled by a company. The photos had to be left out because they were too dark. They questioned the line between reality and need for images that worked in a book. The overall spirit was enlightenment and entertainment, not light-balance accuracy, according to the author.
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