When I think about what I miss most about the quote-unquote “old internet”, it’s the vulnerability. I was born in 1993, and like most people my age, my first experiences online were of treating it like a diary–LiveJournal, Blogger, Myspace blogs, Piczo. I wrote freely and without the fear of consequence, not feeling the need to prove a thesis or even really with the end goal of catharsis. I just shared, and I read other people sharing, and sometimes we shared with each other. There were consequences to that false sense of freedom, eventually. But for a while, I really loved it.
There is virtually no trace of those early blogs online. I am sure that I am overstating just how free they were–after all, I still kept a diary. In my diary, there was still a veneer, still thoughts I was scared to share. When I was a teenager, my home life, mental health and general wellbeing were a fucking shambles. I was bullied, abused, and coping with all of the fun parts of being an undiagnosed autistic. This rarely came up. Instead, I wrote about the fun I had and the music I liked and the boys and girls I wanted to kiss. There was still some pretence, always, a protective shield between myself and the outside world. Between myself and my internal world, even.
Although, when I had a Tumblr, I wrote about my feelings and daily life with a detail I’d be scared to now. It wasn’t private, but I think I took some comfort in the fact that the only other people on Tumblr were vulnerable, tender, even cringe. We all kept each other’s secrets. Then I had a blog, where I primarily posted poetry that obscures the truth, makes it wavy, but still tells more than I would now.
The internet has changed–it’s more about sharing than self-exploration. I also think there’s a lot in the way that we have to share spaces with everyone online now. Once, the only people online at all were massive nerds. On LiveJournal, Tumblr, even the Avril Lavigne forum I used to hang out on, we carved out these spaces where we were understood. We didn’t have to modify our thoughts to be shared with potentially millions of readers far outside of our sphere of understanding. Our followers, our readers, were people like us. That is so far from being the case now that it has altered the internet and the way we use it forever.
The last poem that I posted on my blog was in late May, 2017. I had been writing and living publicly for around a year, and I was about to move to London to take a job at Dazed. I was scrutinised, watched, not to the degree many people are but enough to be dissuaded from sharing my most private thoughts. That last poem is about the move from Brighton, about the life I knew I was leaving behind in exchange for some kind of career. I was worried that I hadn’t enjoyed Brighton, my quiet life, enough while I had it: I can still come back/and that’s something. Living in London, I became more self-conscious than ever, more afraid that the things I wrote and said in earnest would come back to haunt me. Sometimes they did. That feeling of living publicly impacted not only the things I was willing to write and share, but how I processed and experienced my own interior life.
Through those final poems on my blog, I get an insight into a person that I recognise but am so glad to have left behind. She is 24 years old, terrified of not succeeding. Terrified of living a boring life. She is restless, bored, desperate to have everything that she wants. Trapped in a relationship that only exacerbates that boredom. At 30, I am happy, insofar as anyone can be. I have achieved more than I ever wanted, dreamed, or needed. I feel relaxed, satisfied enough that I can live by the sea again and not worry that there’s some mythical life I’m missing out on in London. I have everything I need right here–and maybe that’s why I don’t feel the need to blog, to scream out my feelings into the void and hope that someone hears me. I am married. I can talk to someone who cares what I have to say all day if I want to.
Plus, of course, I get paid to write now. Why would I spend hours a week blogging for free if I can just–do it for money? Well, of course, for the freedom. For the simple fact that I can say something, anything I want, and not have to meet some thesis or prove some point.
So where did all the bloggers go? Well, first of all, this is a blog. Plus, I don’t think that impulse ever leaves a person who benefited from sharing their innermost thoughts and feelings publicly–after all, I did just publish a personal essay collection.