Dear internet,

Angelina Marioni
Aug 28, 2017 · 6 min read

I don’t feel safe anymore talking to you anymore.

And this makes me sad because I love you, and I love so much of what you’ve done for me; for this world.

You’ve connected us, the people of planet earth. You’ve educated us, entertained us. You’ve provided us with culture, history, news, and media. You’ve remastered all the Rolling Stones songs and made them available for my 13 year old self to discover. It’s the middle of the first decade of the new millennial when I first realize that I care about music at all. When I hit the space bar and the song begins to play, I imagine that it’s some date and time in the 60's and a version of my teenage dad is sitting next to me. We rock out together. Everything is tinted yellow like an aged photograph. I’m younger than I am now. I’m probably in some striped tee-shirt and light wash jeans. I’m probably feeling alive and rebellious. In my imagination, my young dad is so cool. We listen to cool music and we’re great friends.

You and I, we’ve been through so much together. Your screams and screeches echo in the viciously saccharin memories of my childhood. People are surprised when I tell them I remember the sound of dial-up. People are surprised when I tell them I remember playing on disneychannel.com and being reminded that one cannot use the phone and the internet at the same time. Our only computer sits outside my bedroom and I often wake up to the sounds of my mom typing in the middle of the night. She’s writing to her family in Japan. Sometimes she brings me back into my room and writes words on my small whiteboard and we practice reading. Just her and I.

I learned how to type fluently before age ten because of you. I’m really good at reading now — way better than my classmates — and I’m sent to an advanced reading class on Monday’s with only three other students in my entire grade. I’m on AIM. lilsquirrel_95 has signed on. Gummybears44 says hey. Sometimes I write carefully curated emails on Yahoo. Andi uses Comcast. Emily also uses Comcast.

My sister uses Myspace. She makes me take pictures of her doing things that I think are weird. Like looking mad or not showing her full face to the camera. She doesn’t smile. She spends so long straightening her black, thick, curly hair. She is so skinny. She has beautiful friends. I ask my mom when I can have a Myspace account of my own and she says when I’m in seventh grade. I also get to wear makeup in seventh grade.

I love Myspace. I love that everyone has one. I love that I’m friends with people I like and people I don’t like. I love that it matters. I teach myself HTML as I code my own profiles. I love getting compliments on my profile. I am so happy when people ask me to design their profiles. I write a bulletin about something probably kind of angsty, and I custom code the font to appear white so I can write secret things that I know people will never see. I add my favorite songs to my playlist and I personally code my settings so that it autoplays when you click on my profile. God, I hope people click on my profile. I wear makeup and take pictures with my friends, just like my sister did. I get it now.

It’s 2008 and most everybody has a Facebook. Even my parents. I resist for so long because I don’t think it’s cool. I don’t like how you can’t customize your page like you can on Myspace. There’s no originality. There’s nowhere for me to express myself. Slowly, all my friends migrate towards the new, blue platform. Myspace is so lonely. My codes no longer matter. I receive a message on Myspace one night from a man in Turkey. It’s in Turkish. I throw it in Google translate and it says something kind of creepy. I delete my Myspace account forever.

Facebook. It overstays its welcome. Someone is doing something right. It’s sticky. I keep coming back to it. I keep finding reasons to stay online. It’s constantly evolving. So am I. I don’t shop at PINK anymore. I have my wisdom teeth removed and I wear my hair wavy now, fighting frizz only when I have somewhere to be. I finally have places to be. I finally have someone to be. I finally understand what it feels like to experience pride when I’ve truly put in the effort. I finally understand what it feels like to be really, truly hurt. I finally understand the validity of emotions. I understand what it means to be.

We express ourselves online. Sometimes we say funny things, sometimes we say hurtful things, sometimes we say aimless things. We tag each other in funny pictures. We comment sentimental things on statuses. Don’t even get me started on birthdays. We’ve created a culture of connectivity, of normalized connectivity. We’re friends with people who we haven’t spoken to since 2010. We’re friends with people we met once in a city we’ll never return to. We’re friends with people across the planet. We learn through each other. We learn through Facebook. We love Facebook.

We trust Facebook. We share our thoughts on Facebook. We pick fights on Facebook. We block people on Facebook. We itemize, systemize, idealize on Facebook. We ‘like’ things on Facebook. We have made our own world on Facebook. We have grown with Facebook. I had braces when I first joined Facebook. Now I’m in my 20’s in my own apartment.

It’s me at 21 years old and the power of the internet becomes even more real. I’m getting jobs through LinkedIn. I’m reading news through BBC. I’m getting paid twelve dollars an hour to help African coffee farmers who are using ethical farming techniques grow and thrive. I think I’m doing something great. I think I’ve seen it all. I could not be more wrong.

When Facebook, my Facebook, our Facebook, goes cold. When words, my words, read sour. When I did not communicate well enough. When I did not do good enough. When I did not try hard enough, I am crushed. Crushed because I hurt people and crushed because this was never my intention. Crushed because of what I see on Facebook. I’m crushed and I feel scared.

Facebook and fear: the twist you didn’t see coming. Unfamiliar, unkind words flood and circulate, bashing into my skull and piercing my most hopeful self. Names turn blue. Article titles turn blue. Links turn blue. There are no memes in this Facebook. There are no friends in this Facebook. There is nothing being shared in this Facebook. I am so unfamiliar with this Facebook.

It’s many months later. I’m on Facebook. White screen shines in my face, my fingers rest on home keys like they’re on vacation. Typing and backtracking is a dirty game I’ve become all too familiar with. Normally, my fingers would take over and dance across the keyboard, churning out meaning sometimes faster than I can make meaning myself. Normally, I would just post it, share it with the world. Normally, it wouldn’t elicit a huge response and normally I’d be so content with just that. But this isn’t normal anymore. Nothing about this feels normal. For the last 9 years since I made a Facebook account in 2008, I would feel normal and satisfied knowing that my carefully curated words have been ingested. But now, this Facebook is new to me. This internet is new to me and I feel betrayed because this internet has been with me this whole time. This internet taught me how to type. This internet taught me how to code. This internet taught me how to research. This internet taught me a lot of things. This internet brought me the Rolling Stones. This internet brought me late night reading lessons from my mom. This internet pulses full of my memories and my photos and my words. But this cold, foreign internet has thing to offer me now. This internet has scarred and silenced me and I don’t know what to do.

I guess I’ll just have to pretend.

)
Angelina Marioni

Written by

I care about a lot of things, and sometimes I write about them.

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