Alright, time to get real. Well, a still very curated, authentic kind of real, because that’s all the internet is—curated authenticity. Except for Reddit, Facebook groups, and forums; some of the shit people talk about there could never be waterboarded out of me.
Anyway, for whatever reason, I feel the need to get some things out of my head and onto the web. I think I’ve been tiptoeing around certain subjects for fear of isolating, upsetting, or even getting canceled by the audience I’ve previously built. But honestly, it’s gotten really exhausting and, quite frankly, annoying, and it no longer serves me.
I think a lot of times people become way too attached to the parasocial relationships they create with those they follow and, in turn, become really turned off by change. But the reality is, people change. They grow, they regress, they go through traumatic events that upend their lives and frameworks of thinking. A world without change would be boring, and we would all be very sad people. And while I have come to embrace change, I fear that not everyone on the internet feels the same way.
Honestly, there’s a lot I’ve said and done in the past, under different usernames and handles, that I don’t believe in today. Particularly around body positivity, tech, censorship, and some other more abstract things that I’m forgetting at the moment. Not to say I don’t still stand by what I said in the past, I just think I have a very different frame of reference now. And I’m sure that was the most vague and annoying sentence to read, so sorry. I guess I just believe that things are much more nuanced than I did before. Now, more than ever, I believe that people have a right to believe whatever they want, and I’m not one to police them.
A lot of what I see on the internet is my own bubble, one that I manufactured many years ago. So, a lot of what I see tends to lean rather extreme and intense. I see a lot of people making bold accusations against others based on how they perceive a situation. I see a lot of leftist purism. And most of all, I see a lot of people unwilling to have conversations. Instead, I see people getting called out or canceled, only to be left out of communities. Candidly, I think that cycle breeds a lot of fear. It makes people unwilling to accept new ideas or engage in conversation because, honestly, the idea of losing community is really scary.
And, listen, I used to be the same way. It wasn’t until I got off the internet for two years, went through intense therapy, lost a friend suddenly, had my own health issues, and experienced the biggest career (my true source of ego) death, that I realized just how frivolous the internet, and social media in particular, can be.
The goalposts are always moving, and I can’t keep up, nor do I care to anymore. I’ve found ways to divorce myself from many perceptions people have of me on the internet (although I always remain curious) because I’ve spent more time investing in myself and my closest relationships. I’ve gotten real about my life and career goals, focusing more on the tangible and physical. And because some of those goals are lofty, they require more energy.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, I’ve diversified my media sources and who I surround myself with. In doing that, I’ve realized just how complicated things are and that, for many people, my viewpoints are still radical. Like every morning, I wake up and I look at the calendar, and it’s January 6th; the date never changes. And then I get in my electric vehicle and get an abortion.
So what I’m trying to say is that getting off the internet and having honest conversations with people—conversations that on my end do not come from a place of hostility or judgment—has actually been really healthy for me.
But yeah, I still fear that not operating the way some of the people who followed me years ago, and resonated with what I created, will hate me or, worse, make incorrect assumptions about me based on their own lived experiences. But the reality is, I’m getting over that. As mentioned, I have goals, and that fear doesn’t fit in with them. I can’t live in fear of getting canceled. I can only commit to being open to dialogue and change, while still being mindful and intentional with my words and whatever I put into the world.
I recently chatted with someone I’ve known distantly for several years about their perception of me and whether they thought I was trying the influencer thing. Their insights were incredibly helpful. It’s helped me reframe a lot of what I need to do. I get why I read as aspiring influencer. But honestly, what I want most is a professional career in tech, and more specifically, social media. I want to be in the rooms helping to create social media products, and I want to help build community policies. I suppose I just want to be a social media thought leader who happens to be well-dressed and talks about culture.
So, with all of that, I will be changing and adapting the way I create. I now understand why some people may not be into what I create anymore, and that’s okay. I appreciate just being able to do all of this. I’m truly grateful I get to create, learn, and grow. Oh, and one question, can anyone really change on the internet?
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