My Little Corner of the Internet
I miss the Internet. Not the Internet we have now but the old one. The Internet that used to be new, unexpected, and never dreamed of getting monetized into oblivion.
My sister went to college the summer before seventh grade and we both got brand-new Hewlett Packard desktops from CompUSA (RIP) – the one that was way up Broad Street. Short Pump wasn’t even a thing yet, but it still felt far. I missed the era of playing KidPix and the Oregon Trail at home, but made up for lost time with hours logged into Roller Coaster Tycoon, SimCity 3000, and The Sims.
For some reason my mom got MSN instead of AOL? Maybe it was a promotion, maybe it was a deal at Best Buy? Who knows, but we were stuck with it and this was my gateway to the Internet. And not just the Internet but my first sense of online community.
First it was random MSN chat rooms, and then AIM became a thing, and then Myspace, where we learned how to code (thanks Tom), and then we had Facebook (before our parents started using it), and then Livejournal. AND THEN TUMBLR. The Internet ruled! All these things just felt like the next step, building on whatever came before it. There was momentum. There was a sense of place – digitally, and you could always find your people.
Then Instagram came, which I think killed everything. I mean, I still have Instgram, I’m not going to delete it, but it’s not the same, and something is missing.
So, after years of thinking and thinking and thining and thinking and saying that I’m going to get back to blogging and carving out my own corner of the internet, I decided to start this SubStack. Finally. It’s a way to get off my little digital island and reclaim that sense of togetherness we lost. The feeling that I miss so much.
I fell in love with the Internet when I was 12 and now I’m almost 36, so that’s nearly 24 years of being constanly online and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
** Dylan took the photo of me while we were in Saguaro National Park some years ago. It’s my favorite picture of me. I never think to ask people about their favorite photo of themselves.