so, i've decided to be insane on the internet (again)
Every year or so since like 6th grade, I get it in my head that it's time to start a personal blog again. Usually because there's a shiny new platform to try, I want to claim my username, and I'm always a sucker for layout customization. And of course I tell myself that this time it'll be different, this time I'll actually stick around and nurture my little internet space into a running archive of my life as it's happening. Well, it's been a while but I'm back at it again, now for the first time with a fully developed frontal lobe! It's 2021, blogs are out, newsletters are in, and for some reason y'all willingly signed up to have my thots drop directly into your inbox. So from the bottom of my heart and the center of my ego, thanks bestie <3
I used to daydream a lot about what it'd be like to be "internet famous." There are so many possibilities for what you could be famous for nowadays and that's pretty fucking cool! Of course, over the years my daydreaming has been recalibrated more cynically into what it'd be like to be a "niche internet microcelebrity" and all the unpleasant interactions that might come with it, especially if I were a creative promoting myself and my art/content/brand/whatever. But I still haven't entirely given up hope yet about getting into something I really love and growing an audience for it. Maybe I'll always daydream about it, because it's always going to be fun to imagine being famous enough to be recognized for something (okay, so technically I've fulfilled this fantasy already by having credits in some pretty big movies, but that's different!) Also, I love attention. In several alternate universes, there's a version of me famous on the internet for digital art, another for photography, another as a youtuber, another just for being a hot egirl, the list goes on... currently I guess the niche I'm most serious about actually pursuing is tattooing, so the idea/goal that I might eventually build up a solid following for tattoo work is what keeps the rest of these daydreams alive and feeling like they're within the realm of possibility, too.
Realistically though, I know myself well enough to know that I would handle even mid-sized subculture fame horribly, and I'm very happy with the freedom of being nobody on the internet. Terry Nguyen has a phenomenal article about this on a broad cultural scale and though I am still very much presenting as a "real" person on the internet, my own reasons for being pro-nobody are much more selfish: I can say whatever the fuck I want! On highly public platforms! With my friends and coworkers following me! With the same usernames that make it pretty easy to tie my name to my face to my job to my employer to all my socials and all my posts! So easy, in fact, that some dude I didn't match with on Tinder googled me and sent me an email asking if I'd give him a shot anyway. Kinda weird and kinda creepy, but not enough for me to care about cleaning up my digital footprint.
This is my perfect level of internet: I can still use my real name, post selfies, talk shit, generally be identifiable as me and my dumb opinions, and not get in trouble for any of it because no one cares. Half my instagram stories are spicy groupchat screenshots and my likes on twitter are an absolute disaster. I've definitely been horny on main before and made it everyone else's problem. And I really outdid myself with this newsletter's inaugural post, exposing me and my silly little sex life like that. I haven't publicly posted a link to this archive yet, so for now I guess only a weirdo explicitly url searching for my online presence would find me here, but I feel like it's only a matter of time before I decide I do like attention enough to share this space. Maybe no one would bite, but hopefully just a few people do and it still preserves my nobody-ness! I haven't quite pinned down exactly what makes being (mostly) unfiltered on the internet so appealing to me, but there's something risqué about having this lil space that gets barely any traffic, but is still public to the world, to be vulnerable in. It's like... almost voyeuristic, but in a fun way because I still get to control the narrative.
I've probably been at least a little insane since the first day I ever logged online, at the tender age of 8 when my internet activity was all Neopets and Millsberry and Yahooligans. Or maybe every other elementary schooler on the internet was also trying desperately to craft an elaborate online persona and run their own bootleg version of SunnyNeo and I just didn't know it (side note, there's something so charming about how it still looks like a site from the early 2010s). Then I discovered blogging around 12 or 13 with Tumblr, and along with that came my first understanding of the concept of virality. Suddenly it wasn't enough to just be having fun online, chatting and sharing things with friends. There was a new goal - make a "good" post and get noticed, by a lot of people, ideally enough people so that your whole blog gets noticed too. And there was an unspoken rule that you couldn't appear like you're trying to go viral. At least in my mind, getting a bunch of notes on a post was supposed to just be something that happened to you, and people with large followings just happened to stumble into internet fame. Obviously I don't think that anymore, and it's so normal to want/try to go viral, and there are entire careers and companies and industries built around consistently going viral, blah blah - but back then, there was definitely a part of me that wanted to have a super popular tumblr with an extremely curated aesthetic that just oh so casually ~*~*turned out that way~*~*.
Well anyway, if I must be perceived on the internet now, then I want to be my chaotic, messy self. I might even say I'm more authentically chaotic online than I am in person at this point, since there are more social expectations that come with existing in real spaces. I really miss the weirdness of the early internet, when there were so many personalization options and so few limitations. I wonder what the internet might look like now if every social website wasn't run by a massive corporation and optimized for sleek minimalism. Frankly I find it rude that I can't even slap an obnoxious animated glitter banner onto my twitter profile anymore.
Is there any way to audit my entire online history? Because what a timeline that would be. In lieu of that, here's an incomplete, roughly chronological highlight reel of my most memorable online snippets (so far):
Created my first Neopets guild called Meepit Mansion, complete with a 12 page manifesto made in MS Word that I physically printed out and stapled into a booklet. I think I got maybe like 3 members total and did not talk to any of them
Hand wrote the entirety of a CSS template onto printer paper, intending to retype it into my neopet's petpage editor because I didn't know copy & paste was a thing
Got in serious trouble with my dad once for looking at uncensored anime tiddies on deviantArt because I didn't know how to erase browser history yet - he never explicitly told me why he was so mad but I was a crying mess and that was the only Bad Thing I had done on the internet at that point, so I assumed he somehow just knew. (fun fact, the artist is still active and drawing the same big tiddy OCs from like 20 years ago, good for him)
Added my neofriends on Skype/AIM when I was 12 and they were in their late teens and learned what horny meant. To this day I still remember that convo, Audrey was 19 and so gracious in trying to explain horny to me without making it weird LOL
Watched the rise and fall of Josh Macedo, my first internet scandal
Wrote Fairy Tail smut fanfic, which still occasionally get likes/follows - went back to read it recently and honestly my writing still holds up!! As someone who had never had sex at that point, I was really good at describing wholesome fluffy smut. I never finished or posted my most explicit fic though... maybe I'll come back to it someday. And no I will not link it
Created askminimako on Tumblr, where I answered fan questions with drawings of a chibi Mako, and then abandoned it in the middle of season 2 after his character was such a dick he turned me off of finishing the entire show. This was the hardest I ever tried to grow an audience by posting art, and my best shot at it too since the Korra fandom was at an all time high, and I think at its peak I had like... 2k followers? But most importantly, it led to the creation of the best piece of fanart I've ever made (and probably will ever make) in my life:
It was even reblogged by one of my fav artists at the time who made sick remixes of the ATLA soundtrack so this is def when I peaked on tumblr
Accidentally let Stitches move out of my village in New Leaf but found someone on Bell Tree Forums to buy him that day for some insane amount like at least 50 million bells
Sold my Neopets account full of unconverted pets for real money (also, trading up to 6 unconverted pets from 0 was its own achievement) which turned out to be kind of a scam... moped about it for like 3 days before moving on with life
Cried about my ex for like a year with the sappiest tumblr posts ever... there were like hundreds of them... then later privated them all one by one because I made a new kpop blog and wanted to link it to main but also didn't want people seeing me be a down bad sadgirl
Pretended to be an NPC on Club Penguin for art school, because art school
Made whatever the hell this is, also for art school
Bought the chungha.kim domain and had a Chungha fansite for a year, just because I could
Became immortalized on the official WDAS instagram
I'm sure I've done a lot more dumb shit online that I just can't think of right now, but if I do later and they're weird/memorable enough I'll add to this list P: I literally have no good conclusion to end this on and life is happening to me faster than I can write these and I want to write about my new life events too but I need to get this out first! Sooo yeah, stay tuned. And tell me about the weirdest thing(s) you've done in your own experience of being perpetually online, if you want.