weird to think, as a certifiable lifelong resident of the internet, someone whose mom was showing me cat videos on youtube when i was 2 (2006), who started watching minecraft let’s plays by myself at the age of 8 (2012), then graduated to storytime (particularly scary stories, like people who talked about having ghosts in their house and shit) at 9, then discovered fanfiction and tumblr around when i turned 11 (and, i should add, decided as an 11 year old not to read smut because i didn’t feel ready for it, a perspective that nobody seems to be considering in these big pubic conversations about kids online) and who lied about my age to make my first tumblr account at the age of 12 (2016), as someone who was lonely and outcasted and who had friends who were less than nice to me, as someone who has been able to use the internet to explore everything that fascinated me for nearly 2/3 of my life—from cults to makeup to fandom to politics to foraging to witchcraft to fashion to everything else—that my experience will become unique. generational.
i have watched the internet decline so steadily in my lifetime. every “innovation” i’ve seen online in the past few years has filled me with dread. i was on tiktok in 2018 but got off of it right before they introduced tiktok shop. i spent more than half of 2023 without touching social media because of the introduction of short form content on everything, and only returned because i checked instagram on a whim in early 2024 and found out a classmate from high school had died, and realized that if an old friend dies, someone i don’t talk to much anymore, instagram will be the only way i learn.
watching as every social media site tries new things to steal more and more of my life away in pursuit of endless growth, watching more and more of the social media be inundated with endless advertisement, to the point that i often scroll past multiple ads in a row these days, watching ai slop flood everything, watching terms like doomscrolling and bedrotting emerge and become mainstream (and jokes, at that, not serious issues that need to be addressed), watching as the internet becomes this grand corporate evil, when it is capable of such good, makes me feel fucking sick.
now i’m watching the whole thing play out. make something amazing, make it profitable, make it addictive, make it more addictive, make it more profitable, rinse, repeat. and now they’re adding requirements for age that are going to use your fucking legal identification to make sure you aren’t doing anything they deem inappropriate for your age. because god fucking forbid a 12 year old pretend to be 13 to read percy jackson au’s and reblog supernatural gifs. because god forbid a 15 year old knows what a boob looks like. (and yes, i’m aware that young kids can find porn and that that can be damaging, create issues, etc. my younger brother did. my parents were able to intervene because they were fucking parenting him, and he agrees that total censorship would not have been a better option. kids have been stumbling onto porn since forever.)
i got into low tech in early 2023 and got a flip phone in late 2024. i need to make something clear: if youtube asks me for a picture of my fucking driver’s license to proceed to my 12 minute weekly update about fast fashion legislation in europe or my 5 hour long analysis of some childhood movie, i am logging the fuck off and picking my book back up. watching my buffy dvds. going to the library. giving in is not a requirement.
i would not be who i am without the internet. i would not hold my head high as i walk through my real life. i would not know there are strange people like me all over the world. i certainly would not have made it where i am (a small, very queer college where i’m not the odd one out for the first time in my life) with the best friends i’ve ever had. i would not be nearly as adept at self expression, i would not be nearly as good at understanding and predicting larger societal shifts, and i would not have held the political/social beliefs i have for nearly as long. the internet made me. and when they kill her, if they haven’t yet, and prop her corpse up beside me, puppeteering her mouth to ask me to buy, buy, buy, watching me through her eyes, i will walk away, and i will find my place in the world without her. but i’ll grieve.
