This Isn't Real
I can remember a time when the internet was greeted with the utmost scrutiny and skepticism. In high school, we weren’t allowed to use it as a source for anything. By college, the only accepted sources from the ‘net were digital versions of printed media, newspapers, magazines, etc. Wikipedia was a joke, an online encyclopedia edited by everyone and anyone. Everyone understood that whatever happened on the internet was not real. It was an alternate reality, a place where you could have a new name (fattymattymcgee was mine) and be someone else.
The early days of access to the internet required an ISP and most people used AOL (America Online). They created a walled experience of sorts. You got an email address (a novel thing at the time), a username, and access to curated news stories. Plus, lots of chat rooms. As a teenager, my friends and I would go into chat rooms pretending to be all manner of person. Mostly, we did it to mess with people. We’d see how far we could get people to go in their explicitness. I remember getting one person to type ROAAR over and over again because we wanted him to pretend to be a tiger. It was an early version of catfishing. Little did we know, we were probably chatting with another group of teens doing the same thing.
We were all on the same page. The internet was bullshit. There was no way to verify who anyone was and unless you knew them personally, all you had was a username. Building friendships was easier and harder at the same time. Easier because you could communicate electronically. There wasn’t the pressure that comes with an in-person meeting. But it was harder because who knew who anyone was? Digital cameras weren’t that affordable yet so exchanging pictures was tough. Your best hope was a shitty webcam that took laughably low-resolution photos. Trust took a while to build.
I met Rena in a chat room. I don’t remember what we were talking about or any of the details surrounding the friendship. I don’t really remember what we even talked about. All I remember is that she was from Jersey, her name was Rena, and she was Asian. I know this because she eventually did send some photos of herself. Clothed ones, don’t be gross. Sexting wasn’t really a thing then. Oh sure, there was porn on the internet. And we downloaded as much of it as we could when we could. But the speeds back then were very slow. A 56k modem was a new and novel device, allowing even faster speeds. An album of music could take an hour to get. A video of any length longer than 30 seconds was a day-long project. So when Rena’s three photos finally came into my inbox, I was overjoyed.
There were plans at one point for me to go visit Rena IRL. I was still pretty young, maybe 13-14, and couldn’t drive. Any trip would require my parent’s aid. You can imagine how they reacted to my proposal to drive down the coast to see someone I met on the internet. I had a better chance of going outside and flapping my arms and flying there. I’m not sure how things with Rena ended. I remember being very attracted to her. We were the same age and she had a great personality. Hell, that’s all we had really. We might have talked on the phone a few times but as I recall, things just fizzled out. I was more interested in my real life and the real living friends I had.
At some point over the last 30 years, the internet became a real place. I think it was from a number of factors. Shopping was the first major breakthrough in legitimizing the web. People were scared to enter their credit card info. A few companies, like PayPal, sprung up to help put people at ease. Over time, the internet changed from a place of skepticism to a modern marketplace, easing fears and making it real. In the 90s, the “dot com” bubble began to grow. If you had a product, an idea, or just about anything else, you had to take it to the ‘net. There was a ton of money in Silicon Valley being invested in thousands of companies, the shareholders were gambling on what would be the NEXT BIG THING. Now there were things called “e-businesses” or “e-commerce”. People started to work at these businesses and now their work was online. The masses were working online, shopping online, and maybe paying bills online. But for the most part, their personal lives stayed mostly confined to their AOL Instant Messenger profiles. And then….
Facebook was not the first social network. Not even close. MySpace was the first one I remember. It was the biggest thing going mid-aughts. And when it sold for almost $600 million, people took notice of this social media thing. Networks sprung up all over the internet. People maintained LiveJournals to express and broadcast their thoughts and opinions. Blogs became a thing, with multiple companies offering free hosting services. E-mail, untethered from the walled spaces of AOL was more common. Gmail was invite-only at one time. It was pretty special if you had an @gmail.com address.
The Rubicon had been crossed. People not only shopped online, worked online, but now their social lives were shifting online as well. Sites like Second Life offered an entirely new experience, where you could literally create a second virtual life. It was dorky, as evidenced in the clip below, but the internet was no longer a scary place full of mystery and shadows. It was the same as real life, only easier to access and disappear into.
I resisted Facebook at first. It seemed… stupid? When it first went mainstream, the only way to signup was with a .edu email address. It was a place for college kids to connect and share experiences. Also, to creep on girls, which was Facebook’s main point in being created. So the story goes. The interface was shitty. You couldn’t customize your posts. Anything you wrote had a predetermined structure. For example, I couldn’t post “Jeez, I dunno about this president guys, lolz”. Every post used your name like “Matt Barnsley is ________” and then you’d fill in the blank. It wasn’t great. Eventually, they improved the interface and allowed other people to join. So I signed up.
It offered a nice way to keep relatives and friends who lived away from you a part of your life. This was all before people realized how easily social media could be manipulated. Remember, even at this time most people regarded the internet with skepticism. There wasn’t a point in trying to gaslight people online. Everyone assumed that was the norm. We were protected by our own dubious approach to the medium.
As the years went by and users’ networks grew from tens to hundreds to thousands of connections, so much of our lives were taking place online. Newspapers were now online. Most of our information came from the internet. The interconnected tubes of fiber optics had begun to replace brick and mortar reality, exchanging it with a simulation of life. People my age were still generally accepting of the notion that the internet was bullshit. But not everyone kept that in mind.
Two groups of people, generations of people really, turned the internet from a fake place into a real one. On one end of the spectrum are the Boomers. These are the olds who got on Facebook to see photos of their grandkids and connect with ancient high school chums. You’d think a generation that spent literally decades decrying the danger of the web wouldn’t have been so susceptible to manipulation online. But consider their perspective. They spent most of their lives without the internet. And then within 15 years it comes along and suddenly bills are being paid online and banking is online and Little Jimmy Jr. is online… it’s easy to see how they could get confused.
For their entire lives, media companies acted like media companies. In other words, newspapers wouldn’t allow their reporters to write anything they wanted. It needed to be fact-checked and edited and well-sourced. You could trust newspapers, even the ones that went online. But that little bitty “social” is doing a lot of work for the new media companies. They claim they aren’t responsible for what happens on their sites. They provide a platform and whatever happens is on the individual user. Can you imagine if a newspaper acted like this? So when your Aunt Jan sees something a friend of hers posted about how Obama is a secret Muslim, you can see why she might believe it. Her friend isn’t a liar and since the internet is “safe” now, it must be true. Right?
The other group of people responsible for the internet becoming real are the Millennials. They’ve only ever known a world with high-speed internet. They didn’t have to dial-up. They didn’t have to wait for hours for a video to download. They, for the most part, are totally ignorant of how the internet came along and why they should be skeptical of it. For all of their lives, the internet was just there, waiting for them on their phones or computers. They came of age during a time when the internet was legitimizing its usefulness. To them, just as TV has always been a part of my life, they accept it as a natural part of life. If you don’t Snap or IG or TikTok, you aren’t part of the moment.
Now, of course, we are speaking in very broad generalities. I know how sensitive Millennials are so I won’t kick them all around. Just as there are olds who know how to use the internet responsibly, there are, of course, Gen Yers who do the same and feel dubious about safety online. But I do think that Gen Xers have an advantage over both generations, having witnessed the rise of the ‘net firsthand. So many young people live their lives online. They have multiple accounts, each for different groups of people they want to allow access to their lives. They take photos of everything. Try going to a concert or any live event. It’s nothing but phones recording shit at bad quality that no one is ever going to watch again. It’s almost like the phone is now our lives. If the phone didn’t see it and record and tweet about it then it didn’t happen.
One of the recent complaints about “cancel culture” is how badly people gang up on someone online. Someone says something stupid or racist or whatever and the whole of the internet turns on them. Their DMs are full of nasty messages and their mentions are full of bile. These poor people, we’re told, are being silenced and having their lives destroyed. Quick, someone start a telethon.
Except they aren’t. They are just fine. You can close your DMs and turn off your mentions. Or better yet, and I know this is a crazy notion, you could GET OFF THE INTERNET! You don’t NEED social media. If you’re a person with enough notoriety to be canceled in the first place, you probably don’t need to wade into the cesspool that is social media. Want to communicate with fans? Start an email list. Or start a blog and turn off comments. Want to post updates, ok fine, then just do that. Don’t read the nastiness. You don’t have to engage with the mouthbreathers. I will save my tears for actual injustice and actual silencing.
None of this is real. It’s all zeros and ones. Hell, unless you know me personally, you don’t even know if I’m real. I could be a woman. Or an old man. Or a 12-year-old. Everything on the internet should be treated with the same skepticism reserved for random graffiti in bathrooms. Do you really think Jenny will be a good time? Even if you do, you don’t pass her number out to all your friends in need of a date. You ignore it. And that’s the change we need in social media.
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, whatever, all of them are manipulated experiences. They aren’t intimate looks into someone's personal life. That’s just the alluring sugar that makes the medicine go down. The pictures are chosen. The posts and hashtags are written and selected with intent. It’s all theater, no matter how close you are to someone. The internet is mostly bullshit (and porn, ok it’s mostly porn). It’s helpful and useful in many ways but creating a virtual life that mirrors the real world isn’t one of them.
You want real? Go outside and take a walk. Watch a bird for ten minutes. Enjoy the clouds passing overhead. Or better yet, delete your social media profiles. Put down your phones. We are all guilty of it. Including me. Whatever your level of engagement online, keep in mind that none of it is real. It’s only a simulation. You ain’t going to find the real world on a screen.