Thinking about this conversation today and how people who don’t even want to be confronted with topics listed in CWs, I started thinking about how there are fewer and fewer spaces online that can be retreats for people who genuinely may need them from the garbage fire that is the world, while still having the kind of social interactions that their personal, physical situation may not afford them.

When I first got online in the mid-90s, social gathering places like BBSes and chat rooms were self-selecting spaces almost always centered around particularly topics. I basically lived on the JavaScript chat rooms on GeoCities— at first on the Times Square one, which gamer-centric, just because I liked the name, and then predominantly on the SoHo Lofts (artists) with occasional trips to WeHo (LGBT).