It all began innocently enough. I decided to take to the Web to find out where I could get hold of the heavy metal albums that formed such a memorable part of my youth in the 1980s.
When I found that new CD versions were quite rare, the grim reality set in - I`m getting old. The icons of my youth are gone and my younger colleagues look at me strangely when I go on about Tractor boots, Jordache jeans, Skylab and Reaganomics. Devastated, my mission to find CDs turned into a quest for a haven where the symbols of the 1980s were intact, somewhere to relive my youth. And I found it.
It seems there are many of us sad nostalgic types out there. I found plenty of sites commemorating not only the 1980s, but almost every other decade in living memory. Even the BBC (http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/ilove/) panders to this sort of thing, with sites dedicated to every decade since the 1960s.
They provide highlights from the news headlines of each year, music hits, Grammy Award winners, toys, fashions, films.... I was having a ball. Every new item I found led me to search for other related memories. Eventually I found the mother lode - the 1980s nostalgia section on the About.com network - 80smusic.about.com.
Despite the URL, the site is not just about music. It has links to everything from advertisements to fashions and fads. And I went from link to link. Before I knew it, I was hooked, trapped in nostalgia for two days, going from site to site looking to recapture my lost youth. Thankfully, I stopped surfing before I began neglecting the present and began spending my entire salary on 1980s albums, posters, clothes, toys and the like.
It is certainly easier to use people`s weaknesses as a hit generator than to help people overcome them.
Iain Scott, finance editor, ITWeb
This is the other dark side of the Internet, the part no one warns you about. The part where your weakness gets fed and reinforced. Mine, as it turns out, is nostalgia. But everyone has some kind of vulnerability, and the sad thing is that there are many people out there who are quite happy to bolster it so they can feel better about their own similar fault.
Most people would see 1980s nostalgia as bizarre. After all, who could get serious about a decade where thin leather ties were cool? But there are some other pretty weird things on the Internet, and I don`t even have to get onto the sexual fetish theme.
Sinister
There are so many people who get a kick out of getting things for free that there are entire Web sites and communities devoted to the pursuit of the freebie (try www.thefreesite.com). Nowhere is this more apparent than in the gaming community, where there is often great interest in "abandonware" (www.flashback-aw.net/) - computer games so old and outdated that their licences have expired. Personally, I think most of them are rubbish and a waste of time and effort, but they`re free, so people want them.
Another thing I don`t get is the concept of "blogging". A blog is someone`s online journal, either around a specific theme or general (www.globeofblogs.com/). That doesn`t help voyeurs who got a kick out of sneaking a read of a sister`s diary as a child.
But these are pretty harmless, especially to people who are not likely to fall into the addiction trap and simply visit the sites out of a passing curiosity. But there are also sinister sites that reinforce more harmful weaknesses. I have come across sites that sell school and university essays, encourage anorexics to maintain their eating disorder, even sites that teach children how to smoke and discourage others from quitting. It is certainly easier to use people`s weaknesses as a hit generator than to help people overcome them.
Sinister or relatively harmless, the message that goes out is: "We don`t need help. We must be normal because there are so many of us."
Count me out. I got trapped in La-la land for long enough. Anyone know of a site that helps me put the past behind me and enjoy the present?
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