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Comment on Burning a Magnesium NeXT Cube (1993)

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The meandering and hyper detailed style was nostalgic to me. Maybe I'm misremembering but I feel like this style was a lot more common 15+ years ago. I wouldn't dream of including this much detail now, and I don't think my writing would be well received if I did. But there's a lot of character in it. It also had more and different typos than I'm used to reading now, typos on the Internet now are mostly the wrong correctly spelled word.

I grew up reading this style of USENET news, BBS post, etc. I’ve never had the capacity to write at length in this manner (lack of patience? self-defeating inner critic?) but I agree, it is still enjoyable to read. And it instantly calls to mind the early internet and the Bay area.

You might be interested in checking out "Up in the Old Hotel". It's a collection of Joseph Mitchell's reportage for The New Yorker from the 30s on – people certainly don't write like they used to!

Comma splices have also become more common.

I had not noticed that, I will keep an eye out.

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