What is being "Online" for?
Apr. 13th, 2020 02:38 amOne of the reasons I have made an effort to start using Dreamwidth again over the past year was a longing for a simpler time on the internet. But in a way, you can never go home again.
Again, I don't miss computers and internet speeds from ten years ago at all, but ten or fifteen years ago was when I was forming my sense of what being "Online" was. I started being a regular internet user between the ages of eleven and twelve, and it's honestly been a blur since in some ways.
But my sense of being part of an "internet culture" happened during my mid-teens, largely under the influence of an older online friend who lived in a constant self-quarantine, well before these times. He ended up becoming really volatile and emotionally abusive due to inadequate mental healthcare and personal responsibility, so that relationship was regrettably lost for good after about eight to ten years. But he had a pretty powerful impact on how I viewed myself, and he was the reason I bothered giving Doctor Who a chance, even though we differed a lot on it once I became a fan.
And that experience of differentiating myself as a "fan" of Doctor Who rather than a friend of someone who liked Doctor Who also watching it to try and commune with him was a sort of game-changer for me in terms of how I interfaced with the internet. This is actually something that is really coming into focus as I'm writing it.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
singedsun wrote a thought provoking post about "following" and followers and the parasocial relationships we develop with people on modern social media. While I would like to respond to that post itself thoughtfully, I wanted to credit it with my own train of thought.
The thing about Dreamwidth is that while you can make the exchange as reciprocal or one-sided as you want, but it's really only as good as the relationships you form in terms of it being anything but a journal that could one day be held against you by the tech-savvy. Modern social media is different.
You aren't the customer of it. You're the product. The fact that it is designed to keep your eyeballs on it for as long as possible, to keep refreshing your timeline or dash over and over when you haven't gone the eff to sleep or doing it reflexively upon waiting or when bored or lonely is a way for those who own those companies to market your eyeballs as their product. And that's why there's the ad-creep and the constant, subtle changes to privacy policy, and the efforts to just barely note when something is a "promoted post" or "ad."
And between becoming aware of how my viewership was being commodified and being kind of mad about it and the fact that the 2017-2018 school year is pretty much a black hole for anything I experienced outside my horrible job, I think I have broken some of the bonds of addiction to the computer and the act of being online itself. It doesn't bother me anymore when I have a device-free day, unless I think I'm worrying someone who's used to my being there out of habit. I try to just let anyone who's used to talking to me know, either before or after, what being MIA was about. And I know I don't have to do that, but really that's the only compulsion yet, and within reason I don't think there's anything wrong with being considerate of others' habits and expectations.
That said, being "Online," (which I keep capitalizing because I think it's like a cultural or mental state of being rather than the way that everyone is perpetually "online" now simply by merit of participating in the mainstream culture) feels different than it used to. I guess it has to do with it being absorbed into the mainstream culture. I no longer have to explain to people what in the world the point of being on the internet is for, the way I did when I was a young nerd, but I have assimilated into the mindless scroll and retweet culture for the most part.
I don't know if there is even any correlation between the way I experience the internet and the fact that I can't remember the last time I was "bored" during this quarantine experience. I see a lot of people having the boredom and available headspace to binge-watch and watch movies and stuff, but the way my emotional engagement with media works, I usually won't watch anything but documentary-type media just to kill time while I eat or anything, due to a perceived "back log" in my brain that I know I have expressed before.
I don't even keep up with any TV shows or anything anymore. It's just that I feel like it has been so long since I had any meaningful output (in a fannish/creative sense) that I am extremely resistant to collecting new input.
And I think it has to do with the fact that I am capable of generating goldfish level interests but not really able to latch onto things to let them become ideas without feeling pulled and tugged by a new one. That's one of the reasons I can't even use this time of being stuck in order to finish fic WIPs and stuff. I know that I don't HAVE to do those things, but I'm just frustrated.
I'm not sure if I made the point I was originally trying to make, but we can reassess later.
Again, I don't miss computers and internet speeds from ten years ago at all, but ten or fifteen years ago was when I was forming my sense of what being "Online" was. I started being a regular internet user between the ages of eleven and twelve, and it's honestly been a blur since in some ways.
But my sense of being part of an "internet culture" happened during my mid-teens, largely under the influence of an older online friend who lived in a constant self-quarantine, well before these times. He ended up becoming really volatile and emotionally abusive due to inadequate mental healthcare and personal responsibility, so that relationship was regrettably lost for good after about eight to ten years. But he had a pretty powerful impact on how I viewed myself, and he was the reason I bothered giving Doctor Who a chance, even though we differed a lot on it once I became a fan.
And that experience of differentiating myself as a "fan" of Doctor Who rather than a friend of someone who liked Doctor Who also watching it to try and commune with him was a sort of game-changer for me in terms of how I interfaced with the internet. This is actually something that is really coming into focus as I'm writing it.
singedsun wrote a thought provoking post about "following" and followers and the parasocial relationships we develop with people on modern social media. While I would like to respond to that post itself thoughtfully, I wanted to credit it with my own train of thought. The thing about Dreamwidth is that while you can make the exchange as reciprocal or one-sided as you want, but it's really only as good as the relationships you form in terms of it being anything but a journal that could one day be held against you by the tech-savvy. Modern social media is different.
You aren't the customer of it. You're the product. The fact that it is designed to keep your eyeballs on it for as long as possible, to keep refreshing your timeline or dash over and over when you haven't gone the eff to sleep or doing it reflexively upon waiting or when bored or lonely is a way for those who own those companies to market your eyeballs as their product. And that's why there's the ad-creep and the constant, subtle changes to privacy policy, and the efforts to just barely note when something is a "promoted post" or "ad."
And between becoming aware of how my viewership was being commodified and being kind of mad about it and the fact that the 2017-2018 school year is pretty much a black hole for anything I experienced outside my horrible job, I think I have broken some of the bonds of addiction to the computer and the act of being online itself. It doesn't bother me anymore when I have a device-free day, unless I think I'm worrying someone who's used to my being there out of habit. I try to just let anyone who's used to talking to me know, either before or after, what being MIA was about. And I know I don't have to do that, but really that's the only compulsion yet, and within reason I don't think there's anything wrong with being considerate of others' habits and expectations.
That said, being "Online," (which I keep capitalizing because I think it's like a cultural or mental state of being rather than the way that everyone is perpetually "online" now simply by merit of participating in the mainstream culture) feels different than it used to. I guess it has to do with it being absorbed into the mainstream culture. I no longer have to explain to people what in the world the point of being on the internet is for, the way I did when I was a young nerd, but I have assimilated into the mindless scroll and retweet culture for the most part.
I don't know if there is even any correlation between the way I experience the internet and the fact that I can't remember the last time I was "bored" during this quarantine experience. I see a lot of people having the boredom and available headspace to binge-watch and watch movies and stuff, but the way my emotional engagement with media works, I usually won't watch anything but documentary-type media just to kill time while I eat or anything, due to a perceived "back log" in my brain that I know I have expressed before.
I don't even keep up with any TV shows or anything anymore. It's just that I feel like it has been so long since I had any meaningful output (in a fannish/creative sense) that I am extremely resistant to collecting new input.
And I think it has to do with the fact that I am capable of generating goldfish level interests but not really able to latch onto things to let them become ideas without feeling pulled and tugged by a new one. That's one of the reasons I can't even use this time of being stuck in order to finish fic WIPs and stuff. I know that I don't HAVE to do those things, but I'm just frustrated.
I'm not sure if I made the point I was originally trying to make, but we can reassess later.
