Both find traction in the allure of inhabiting a selective self, whether built from the materials of lived experience (camping-trip photos and witty observations about brunch) or from the impossibilities that lived experience precludes: an ideal body, an ideal romance, an ideal home. But maybe Facebook and Second Life aren’t so different in their appeal. The rise of Facebook wasn’t the problem of a competing brand so much as the problem of a competing model: It seemed that people wanted a curated version of real life more than they wanted another life entirely-that they wanted to become their most flattering profile picture more than they wanted to become a wholly separate avatar. It eventually lost popularity in favor of Facebook, and Jamison writes: Leslie Jamison’s essay "Sims Life" tracks the origins, rise, and fall of the once popular “Second Life.” The website’s model is simple: create your own avatar to live in an online world of luxury and pleasure. Stay within yourself as much as you possibly can. Facebook quickly became unbearable and I retreated with two life lessons:ĭon’t join a community of people you know from your real life. I couldn’t really tell if what I was saying was relevant, couldn’t quite grasp sarcasm, and took everything too personally.
TUMBLR GIRL OFFLINE
Offline and online, I would try to join conversations (or message threads) with comments I’d hoped would be funny and clever, not realizing how dumb and dense I’d sound. Mostly I got bullied because I could never understand the hidden cues and signals of the social script everyone grasped so easily. I was bullied in school for being socially illiterate. I didn’t spend as much time talking to people and I think I got rid of the Facebook altogether because my classmates all bullied me on it, privately and publicly. I made one in sixth grade and spent hours playing their game Petville.
I was too young for the first big community, Myspace, but Facebook was incredibly popular when I was in middle school. We also both turned to the internet in a way of combating loneliness, believing that our online communities could be our refuge. And so you feed into it.”Īngus and I came-of-age on the same early internet. They take in every molecule and element of what makes you the person you are. They listen to your anger, and they listen to your love for celebrities and boybands. But Twitter does…Twitter listens, so does Instagram, and so does Tiktok.
Nothing makes sense and nobody wants to listen to you. The comfort, she writes, is the belief that it’s a space of your own, to speak and be heard: In her essay "The Last Sad Girl Alive", Haaniyah Angus writes about growing up online, of social media and online communities, how they provided comfort and isolation for her. When I write this, I think most about Tumblr.
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