Deep Dive

For as long as I’ve had access to a computer, I’ve been an active member of very specific online communities. As a teenager, I made fan sites for my favorite singers at the time — Celine Dion and Mariah Carey — and was beyond stoked to be part of what we called “webrings.” I was so excited (and honestly, kind of honored?) to paste the code into my site and click “next” or “previous” to make sure it worked properly.

In high school, I started a LiveJournal where I met so many cool people — some of whom I’m still in touch with today. That was during my transition from pop divas to emo and punk bands. I was quoting Dashboard Confessional and making photo collages. I had my first camera at that point and took plenty of silly pictures. A couple of years ago, I was able to download all of them from Photobucket before they wiped them out permanently.

Then came college, and somehow I ended up on Tumblr. By then, I was getting more serious about photography, reading voraciously, and developing a more “adult” taste in pop culture. That’s when I became obsessed with Sufjan Stevens, Fleet Foxes, Dave Eggers, Kurt Vonnegut, The Godfather — things I still consider foundational to my artistic sensibility and creative practice. Even now, I turn to them for inspiration or comfort.

I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I used to believe my relationship with the internet was a byproduct of growing up in a rural town — isolated from my friends and with little sense of community outside my family. But now that I live in a city, I still find myself turning to the internet for connection. Part of it is living far away from my longtime friends. Part of it just feels natural. I wonder if other millennials who grew up with the early internet feel the same way.

These days, I spend a lot of time on Reddit — mostly in threads about coffee, books, and travel. It feels familiar, but also different. I’m so aware of how much older I am now, moving through a space I’ve inhabited since I was a kid. The internet itself has changed so much. Content is shorter. I can’t even really find blogs anymore — at least not the kind I used to love. Most of them now are cluttered with ads and affiliate links, not the personal, thoughtful corners they once were.

It leaves me feeling too lazy to sit down and write my own thoughts sometimes. It just feels pointless now and then. But I try to remind myself why I had a LiveJournal or Tumblr all those years ago — I just needed a space of my own. And having that, even now in my 30s, no matter how crowded or chaotic the online world feels, still feels pretty good. And for me, that’s enough.