The story I’m about to tell is set around 2005, when the internet was a different place, a place where people could bond over their niche interest in small, self-carved corners of the web. A place where you really didn’t know the person writing on the other side of the screen. Yet a place where you could slowly grow authentic relationships that would last decades.
It will take a while to get there, so bear with me.
Before I go into the details, you have to use your imagination and frame the protagonist (me). 20-something guy, moved from Sicily to Milan to study computer science.
If you don’t know Milan, it’s a very dynamic and opportunity-filled city, but back then, if you were a student, it was not the easiest task to blend in, especially if you didn’t know anyone to begin with. So, past-me was spending way more time interacting online than in person.
Procrastination, you know the drill, there is always a way to avoid doing your duties. For me it was watching american and british tv-shows, in their original language, fansubbed in Italian. Not on regular tv, you couldn’t find the good stuff there, but rather on obscure IRC channels were people were longing for the next episode and chatting about it at any time of the day and night.
So episode after episode I did find myself totally hooked and waiting for the next episode was getting harder and harder. Sort of an addiction.
Imagine when the new episodes stopped coming. The person creating the subtitles would disappear for a week and suddenly you’d have hundreds of people begging.
Faced with the situation, you basically have two choices: join the fingernails-eating bunch on the channel or try to find a solution yourself. I chose the latter.
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That thing above is called “subtitle”. It’s a text file containing the translated dialogue of the show, with timestamps. How hard can it be?
Well, not really hard, but time consuming, hell yes. Consider everybody was just editing the plain text, no fancy tools involved.
First thing I did was reaching out to the person already in charge of creating subtitles, asking if I could help.
My memory is a bit blurry and sadly I don’t have any of the old chats anymore, but I remember the deal was: I would do half of the translation and other guy the second half. Then he would just check again the whole file and publish it. All of this was done by exchanging emails and over several days.
I distinctly remember the feeling of fullfilment and joy when our hard work reached the public and people could finally enjoy their favorite tv-show.
What happened then? Not much in the short-term. I just kept doing it for the tv-show I liked. Just one show that a few hundreds fans were watching.
Escalation
I wouldn’t be here telling you this if it didn’t escalate. And trust me it did. The thing with tv-shows is: it’s hard to just watch one, they are addicting and eat up your free time quickly. And that’s basically what happened to me back then. One show lead to the next and there I was struggling even more to keep up with my duties. Anyway… let’s fast forward a bit.
Discovery was not a solved problem, nobody was drowning in reels, you had to actively search for new content, new places, people with same interests. I remember a few forums I visited daily and every now and then a new one would pop up. The entry effort was high for today’s standards: create an account, learn the rules, read the FAQ, then post something and hope you didnt miss any of the required steps.
I’ll gather some memories and write them down. Stay tuned.