In The Year Nineteen Ninety-Nine

When hope was still alive.

April 1999.

The most popular song was “No Scrubs”, by TLC. The US was bombing Yugoslavia. “The Matrix” had just come out. MMORPGs were becoming popular among a niche crowd of gamers, and Ultima Online had over 100,000 very avid players.

One of them made a gossipy blog about it, a few years before blogs were actually a thing. The title had a Linda Tripp joke, a reference to a then-current scandal about the then-current President, who to everyone’s dismay had an affair with an intern and then lied about it.

I think the concrete proof time travel does not exist is that news reports about that scandal were not constantly interrupted by people arriving from 2020 shouting “WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?!?”

Twenty years later. Ultima Online still… has about 100,000 very avid players. The most popular song apparently is some ghostly cowboy screaming at the sky. The most popular MMORPG, called “Facebook”, has about 2.6 billion very avid players. The US is bombing quite a lot of places, after going somewhat insane after someone had the temerity to bomb the US. A new “Matrix” movie is in production. And the now-current President, well, there are a few issues. Also, there’s this pandemic.

1999 looks awfully good, in the rear view mirror. So why not start blogging again?

I’ll try to update at least once a week, more often if current events warrant, less often if I’m distracted by a bright and shiny object. Who knows, maybe things aren’t completely awful (spoiler: they are).