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As bleak, frightening and all-around life-ruining as the internet<\/a> has proven itself to be, there was a time not long ago when the World Wide Web felt like a portal, not a black hole. I still recall the promise of new-millennium digital iconography, when knowledge fused with access, and posters with images of kids surfing on textbooks down the information superhighway adorned school computer rooms. Getting to \u201cgo on the computer\u201d was an opportunity for entertainment, yes, but it was also a chance to learn in a fun, controlled environment. The internet was safe. The internet had something to teach us. It was the new frontier of learning and community \u2014 until it wasn\u2019t.<\/p>\n A formative introduction to the internet\u2019s tenuous rules for engagement happened when I was 13. (Have no fear: This is not a horror story. ) Let loose on the internet for a few hours every night after completing my homework, I flew to the \u201cCloverfield<\/a>\u201d message boards on IMDb, where all of my best, most sagacious friends like Clover_Believer and user152154 were waiting for me. We\u2019d spend our days going about our regular lives and, in our evenings, put our heads together to speculate on the latest theories in the alternate reality game \u2014 ARG, for the uninitiated \u2014 that preceded the 2008 creature feature. \u201cCloverfield\u201d made a splash in theaters over the previous summer, when a teaser trailer with only a January release date and no title appeared before the first \u201cTransformers\u201d movie, sending nerds running to their bulky desktop workspaces.<\/p>\n Over the next six months, my fellow detectives and I followed the bevy of clues, sprinkled across the internet like digital breadcrumbs. Together, we filled in the backstory for a monster movie that would begin in media res, offering no answers of its own. It never occurred to me that I was likely sleuthing alongside a bunch of grown adults. There was no way of knowing, and everyone was pretty level-headed \u2014 as long as you didn\u2019t speculate that this was a live-action \u201cVoltron\u201d movie, which would be a one-way ticket to an inbox full of asterisk-laden replies.<\/p>\n In a hyper-modern environment like the internet, so eager to eat itself alive in the pursuit of newness, \u201cThe End of Oak Street\u201d fandom is delightfully prehistoric.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n In the years since, I\u2019ve kept one eye open in case any new \u201cCloverfield\u201d properties drop out of thin air. It happened in 2016 with \u201c10 Cloverfield Lane\u201d (good), and again in 2019 with \u201cThe Cloverfield Paradox\u201d (atrocious). And because Hollywood can\u2019t stop their sequel train, another entry could appear at any second.<\/p>\n That rare feeling of excitement emerged once again, seeing J.J. Abrams<\/a>\u2019 name and his Bad Robot production company attached to the teaser trailer for this summer\u2019s \u201cThe End of Oak Street.\u201d Starring Anne Hathaway<\/a> and Ewan McGregor<\/a>, the film explores what happens to a family who wake up one day to find that their quaint suburban block has moved somewhere else entirely. Everything\u2019s already awry when, suddenly, a dinosaur walks past their window.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n