#internet years

[me3dia]

How old do you think you are?

It's been selfie week on MLTSHP; just one of those unofficial things that starts off with one or two people and it turns into a trend. I posted my own as I recovered from covid.

The thing that strikes me is how much older everyone seems to be compared to my assumptions. I should know better; many of the folks on that site are people I've known on MetaFilter and other sites since the early 2000s, so of course they're not teenagers. Those early bloggers and Twitter friends are all in their late 30s at minimum, and much more likely their 40s and 50s. But I have come to realize that I perceive my online self as still being in my late 20s/early 30s, and everyone else being that age as well.

It's not evenly distributed — I definitely feel older on TikTok, and I don't really think about age at all on Instagram. But in my mind, the me that is on the internet is roughly 28. (In some ways that's about how old I perceive myself in real life, too, but not entirely; my body reminds me every day how old I really am.)

So my question is this: How old are you on the internet, in your mind?

[trivorowo]

With my recent dive into Tumblr, I have realised I am much older in internet years. Every day I see some new discourse in which I need at least 5 pages worth of context on, and I'm here just looking at the funnies like I'm a middle aged man perusing the local newspaper on a lazy Saturday morning.

[wisdomforceos]

In terms of the internet, nothing has happened yet. The internet is still at the beginning of its beginning. If we could climb into a time machine and journey 30 years into the future, and from that vantage look back to today, we’d realize that most of the greatest products running the lives of citizens in 2044 were not invented until after 2014.

You Are Not Late by Kevin Kelly

[morecolorfulmetaphors]

bucket for my creys more like walker for my bum hip

[stiliskni-blog]

You literally posted 5 weeks ago tabi :)

thats yEARS ANON YEARS

[tellmeayarn]

I've spent a lot of time on Youtube the past couple of days - amounts of Youtube that made me check to make sure I didn't have some sort of feed telling the world exactly how much it was (it doesn't, yay! just the things I've "liked") - and it had got me thinking about blogging and vlogging. Do you know how long I have had some kind of blog?? It has been TWELVE years.

Now, for anyone who is, like, an adult, that isn't a long time. However, I am not talking to adults, I am talking to THE INTERNET. You know how they say one human year is about 7 years to a dog in terms of aging? (Not exactly but close enough.) I would estimate "internet year" is the equivalent of at least 15 calendar years. MAYBE MORE. According to that estimation, I have been blogging on and off for at least 180 of my bullshit "internet years" and I am still TERRIBLE AT IT. Particularly since the internet has developed, blogging has become more and more of a SOCIAL activity. No matter how much I would like to DO the social aspect of it, I am just no good at it.

I have a variety of communication problems in regular old boring LIFE - when I try to boil it down I call it "social anxiety" without the word "disorder" because wtf do I know about disorders - there are general WORRIES, most related to being embarrassed in some way (I won't enumerate them... it would be a mighty list), but I think the biggest problem is just words. I either have so many words I can actually feel them trying to funnel down into my mouth and just getting stuck, or I just have none at all. Completely blank mind. That, I think, is what they call my "internal critic" being so harsh that it just shuts down all functionality, not just in communication but in the ability to even string a thought together.

I'm sure it's happened to you, some time when you stuck your foot so far in your mouth your shoes are about to dissolve in the stomach acid and all you can do is STARE at yourself in SILENT SHOCK.

That is how I feel when I am trying to say "Hello" to someone. It's a preemptive strike.

That is why the internet is wonderful for me!! If I'm typing, that big funnel of words goes all the way from my brain to my fingers and somehow that filters out a lot of the crap. And the fact that I can take a moment to think makes me worry less. But for some reason, that doesn't actually allow me to be a real participant in any viable internet community. It's still basically me, over here, wanking, same as the earliest days of LiveJournal. I know that blogs/vlogs**  are an essentially egocentric medium, but the way I do it seems more than the average. I don't know how to change it, but I want to learn.

**I would actually really LOVE to do vlogs/short videos of some sort but I hate looking at/hearing myself, and I am just such a horrible photographer trying to film things seems like a bad plan.