I THINK THEREFORE I TWEET

I've unearthed (un-interneted?) a few ancient gems in the past couple of days: three Photobucket accounts and a really old blog.

With regards to the Photobucket accounts: my god, why the fuck didn't anyone tell me to stop taking photos of myself?

With regards to the old blog(which actually might have an 's'): actually, I'm not too sure where to start with this one. I've been reading old entries, and I know I thought I was writing really deep and meaningful shit, but now I just cringe after reading certain paragraphs. Why the fuck didn't anyone tell me to stop writing about myself? Was it because we were all doing the same thing, and we all actually gave a shit about each other's 'deep insight' to the proclaimed nuances of our so-called lives? Fuck, what a pretentious fucking thing to have. (Yes, I know, shut up.)

Anyways, it made feel nostalgic, and as horrified as I am to know that these things exist in a medium that at the best of times is a fucking wasteland, I'm still kind of glad these blogs exists. It's almost like a tracking device; I can track the trajectory of my so-called life, and pinpoint times when my biggest worry was over when I would see my then-boyfriend (as opposed to now, where 'then-boyfriend' has been replaced with the infinitely more scarier--and elusive--'next paycheck.'

Nostalgia is a tricky girl. It's constantly re-creating something that I once cherished, slowly morphing it into some unrealised idyllic time in my life. Naivety also has a large role to play, I would imagine. I was a pretty clueless, shit-eating young adult who thought I was better than most because...I don't even know why. Why the fuck did I think I was better than most people? Because I had a blog? Hah, what bullshit. I was just as clueless as everyone else, trying to carve my space out in this life, using the internet as a crutch to thinking everyone gave a damn.

Maybe that's what's wrong with this new generation. I would like to think my internet-self has matured, realising that 100% of the internet does /not/ give a shit about 99.9% of the things I do. And that has come from years of having shitty blogs. I am able to stand back and think, "wait, I should not share this because a) no one cares, b) it's inappropriate, c) everyone can see it." Unfortunately for a lot of people, they didn't really have that maturing stage or beta testing. They have been thrown into this hyperconnected world where (and this is where Orwell and co. got it wrong) everyone can spy on everyone else. And they want to tap into that because it might make them feel connected to something or someone--share some universal human events or some such.

We all have this incessant need to share things about ourselves, and it pretty much stems from--at least this is the case for me--wanting to feel part of something. A comment, a like, a repost--somewhere someone has recognised something I did, and it somehow validates my existence. Someone somewhere has experienced the same thing, and somehow a connection is forged. At least in the internet world in which my old-self used to relish. Everyone wants to feel part of something, and the internet, especially social media, has made that possible. To quote one of the first lines I have fallen in love with,

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.

If everyone has their eyes closed, no one is watching me, and I am dead to all. My old-self needed those eyes on me in order to prove to someone (and myself?) that I was not alone and was part of something. If no one comments or sees what I do on the internet, the word has dropped dead.

I think, therefore I blog, I tweet, I comment, I like, I am.