2012 Internet Culture?

If you ask me, 2012 does not seem as if it was half a decade ago. In my last post, I talked briefly about how different internet culture was in 2012 compared to now, or at least, in my experience it is. By 2012, everyone had been on Facebook for quite some time. Facebook was THE social media platform. It had long since replaced MySpace and was picking up speed very rapidly; however, the problem was becoming that literally everyone was using Facebook, including old people. Adults were one thing that millenials did not have to worry about on MySpace, but on Facebook? They collected and gathered by the millions, sharing recipes, posting pics of their middle child’s soccer game, a 10th wedding anniversary post, boundless obligatory “happy birthdays” on people’s walls. They sort of joined and made young people move over for their cringy attempts at social media. For me, 2012 was when I quit using Facebook and moved to Twitter and Tumblr. I never deleted my Facebook profile, I just quit checking it and posting, which was good because now I am back on it quite regularly. So there I am, 15-years old, ravenous for Harry Potter fandom content. Tumblr was a must. It was fit to burst with fandoms and memes. The site was hilarious to me. I would sit on there for hours and hours and laugh at this (what I thought then) high quality humor. I would sit during study hall in school and use up data on my very basic smart phone and show everyone my reblogs for the day. They would, in turn, show me a funny post on Facebook and I would internally chuckle because I had seen that months ago. I was at the top of the meme heirarchy in 2012. Besides Tumblr, I really got into Twitter. At that point, not many of my local friends had one, let alone used it frequently. I used it mainly to follow celebrities and I tweeted things that I’m glad are 5 years deep in my timeline. Good and buried under the tweet progression of my life. Twitter made you feel so close to famous people and today it still does (though sometimes I think we wish we had a little less of the POTUS on there). It was like the first social media to allow you to quickly and concisely communicate with anyone at any time. Those two sites were my escape from the “stuck life”. I felt a little bigger than myself and felt just a tiny bit more important. To my friend group, I felt revolutionary. Fast forward to today, I still use both Twitter and Tumblr daily, along with Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. The platforms have changed so much, but I will forever love the evolution. Social media gets such a bad rep nowadays, but I think it’s the best thing to happen to the “stuck kids”. Connection to something other than the same 100 kids you see every single day for 12 years is like liquid gold. As I think about my move to Nashville, I like to think about how social media is actually going to keep me connected TO my small town. I will get to watch, from afar, the drama, pettiness, and smallmindedness that still festers there, without actually having to dwell within it. Essentially, god save the social media!

hang in there, babe.

I am reviving an old aspiration with this post. I had no idea that downloading and sifting through WordPress would cause a resurrection of a 15-year old version of myself. When I first downloaded this app, I was pretty sure this was the first time I had ever signed on to something like this, however, when I entered my email address I was greeted with the “this email is unavailable” message. So, I’m like, WHOOOOOO is using this email address? (Spoiler alert: it was just past me confusing present me). At 20, literally no one wants to have a run in with their 15-year old self. I had uploaded an awful profile picture of me wearing a Harry Potter t-shirt and making sure that you focused on the shirt more than my horrendous looking face and hair. To be fair, 15 was the last “ugly” year before I had my first glow-up (I had a second glow-up at 20, but I’ll talk about that in another post). So, really if I could say anything to this WordPress ghost, it would be to hang in there because you’ll start loving profile pics instead of dreading them. My usernames were basically the same stuff I have been using forever and still continue to use, but my profile bio?? I won’t recite it word for word, but if you think about what a Tumblr-addicted, Harry Potter loving girl would post in 2012, then that’s roughly what we were working with. I read it, cringed and laughed, then quickly deleted it and typed in something simple and hasty, anything to replace that ancient fossil from 2012, tucked away in this website for 2017 me to unearth. It is so funny to think about how much internet culture has changed in five years. In some weird way I miss how fandomy it used to be, but in other ways it definitely belongs in the archives. Getting back to the fact that this is my first post, I had originally joined this website as a 15-year old, stuck in a small town in Pennsylvania, who was so constantly frustrated with how stuck she really was. It is very liberating to log on, now 20, having lived in 2 other places, and planning on moving in November to Nashville. I now have the freedom to support myself financially to do these things that 15-year old me wanted so badly. I had never posted anything back then because I simply did not have anything to write about. I hated where I lived, I hated going to school every day and having the same boring routine. I was hopelessly lost in fandoms and slowly developing an eating disorder that would last another year. All of this will only be the tip of the iceburg for me because the next 5 years get incredibly interesting. I wish there was a way I could open this up in the past, for this whole thing to work in reverse, so that 15-year old could read and be reassured that life is not going to be so stationary. She DREADED being stuck where she was, but hey, it didn’t take long for things to change and pick up speed. She’d be so excited to see that this life is our own now and I am finishing what she so clumsily and half-assedly started. YOU’RE WELCOME!!! Life comes at you so fast, yet so slow all at the same time. It isn’t till you’re standing still that you realize how far you’ve come.