I was a participant in an online community called AtomicMPC. It was a bleeding edge computer mag and the forums that sprung up around it was immense. Ten years running they booked out an entire pub once a year and had a meetup, people came from all over australia and sometimes new zealand to participate. I went last year for the tenth Atomic M337. i have the shotglass. a longtime member Juggs proposed to his girlfriend Cheekychops that night. it was epic.



In 2004 we held the third birthday LAN for the community, my friends and I ran a 3 day gaming event for 300+ people from all over australia. we sold tshirts and had competitions. we were young but we managed to pull it off.



throughout all this was the magazines. from issue 28 to issue 108 i paid a yearly subscription for. it was the glue that held it all together. the forums were abristle with arguments and laughs. injokes and cliques. but it was all based around a print magazine.
I stopped subscribing and continued to frequent the forums.

then i stopped going there.

it wasnt the same. the old boys club ran the show and most of the interesting people had left. the mag was less relevent as the things we used to think were extreme were now mainstream. i got invited to the 11th Atomic M337 but im unlikely to fly to Sydney and go.



I've been heavily ingrained into the atomic community. so when the time came to clear out some old stuff i looked wistfully at my pile of old atomic magazines and memorabillia.
a stack of eighty magazines with CDs, stickers and posters.

these represented a good chunk of my young adulthood. from late teens to mid twenties i was a notable person in this community and these pieces of wood pulp and ink will never be read again.
I have no need for them. they are but baggage of a bygone time.



Do it quickly. like a bandaid.
I'd agonised over it for a weekend. staring at my blank shelves, empty but for a tall stack of once-awesome computer magazines. the glue that bound me to this community that was now a shell of its former self.
The throaty diesel engine sound of the garbage truck rumbled up my street.
I rose from my chair, hefted the magazines all at once between my hands, twelve kilograms of my past and walked them outside with purposeful strides, and threw them into the gaping maw of the bin.
I grabbed up a few that lay scattered on the top and tore them down the centre, issue 88, issue 93 and issue 102 ripped apart.
i limply threw the pieces on top of the pile of magazines and closed the lid. wheeled the bin down to the kerb and sat on the retaining wall for the truck to come.

The truck's extendible arm thrust out and grabbed the bin around its middle. hoisted it high into the air and swallowed the thousands of glossy pages whole. dropping the bin back on the kerb with a grimy indifference to the years of knowledge and community it just consumed.

I felt... relieved. cleansed.

sometimes we need to shuck off these ponderous momentos anchoring us to the past before we can move on.