A word that used to mean something: Netizen. A citizen of the early internet. Somebody who didn’t just use it—they belonged to it. Who understood that the early web wasn’t a product. It was a place. And like any place, it needed people who gave a damn about how it was built.
He built his first world at nineteen, in a dormer above his mother’s garage in Meadville, Pennsylvania. Not with wood or nails—with keystrokes, patience, and a modem that danced every time it connected.
It was 1996. The internet was still more promise than place. And he was one of the people trying to make it one—one forum post at a time.
Then he was gone. And the internet didn’t wait for him. It got faster. It got richer. It got hungrier.
When Covid hit in 2020, the whole world migrated online overnight. And somewhere in western Pennsylvania, a forty-three-year-old man with nothing ahead of him and even less behind sat down at a keyboard for the first time in two decades.
He didn’t recognise what he found. But he recognised what it was doing to people.
Netizen — coming soon.
Nick
