on me and the internet, 20 years in

i got my first internet-connected computer in august of 1996. that means i’ve been online for 20 years. we had a windows 95 machine with a 28.8 modem and a trial AOL disc. boy howdy, it was on.

initially, the internet was GREAT. it was fascinating, something i’d poke around on for fun a few minutes at a time. one friday night in high school after we’d been out, a bunch of us came back to my house to pore over the heaven’s gate cult website and laugh at the weirdos. we were among the first, if not the first, class of international baccalaureate candidates who got our exam results online. we all went to someone’s house as a class, which got mad awkward when not all of us got the diploma. but we all still wanted to be there together, in part because it was so damn new. the internet had dark corners then. i just never saw them. i spent time poking around AOL chat rooms, but got bored pretty quickly. with how hard it was to connect, and how slowly it moved, i only wanted to use my time online to talk to people i knew.

it’s obviously different now. as broadband grew, it became so much easier to do things online. as the technology got cheaper, it also got more accessible. that first computer was a gift from my grandfather to my dad, and it cost $2,000. my own first computer came from the college savings i had; it was $2,100. these computers combined had about 10% of the storage of the free USB stick i got from a vendor at my last lawyer meeting.

i can’t honestly say, 20 years in, that this is a good state of affairs. i’m probably in the last group of people with good memories of what life was like before constant internet, but who also doesn’t dismiss it out of hand like older folks tend to do. folks older than me love to traffic in the “internet vs. real” delusion to insulate themselves from doing anything about the horrors that are perpetrated there every day. that delusion also keeps them from taking the good works done on the internet seriously, but i digress.

the great things about the internet are SO GREAT. the terrible things are SO TERRIBLE. there’s nothing neutral about it. but the balancing test each person has to perform when going online generates VERY different results depending on who you are. a young-ish white dude will always be able to enjoy more great and experience far less terrible. heavens help you if you’re a black woman of any age, especially if you’re LGBT or gender non-conforming. and that’s america writ large, isn’t it? we can just see all of it now.

this much access to everything all the time with no way to shut it off other than totally opting out is new. and it’s basically not possible to opt out anymore. life happens online. my job requires connectivity, as does most everyone else’s. your banking is online, your shopping is online. aside from food and maybe home improvement supplies, brick and mortar stores continually shove all their inventory online. unless you live in the rural south or the mountain west, you’re doing everything online.

and i can’t say that’s a good thing, especially after the years of intensifying public racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, violent, terrifying abuse that is the internet’s calling card now. someone decides that you’ve transgressed against whatever bullshit they stand for, and it’s on. you’re doxxed, you’re hacked, you’re swatted. and we know full good and well that neither tech companies nor anyone in a position of political/legal power cares to do anything about it. hell, the tech companies are run by some of the very same shitlords pulling the trigger on the abuse.

we live in a post-objective truth world these days. any crackpot bullshit lie can get published on a web site and collect raving fans who will hold it up as the “real” truth. and it’s killing people: babies dying of whooping cough, trans women murdered in the street, you name it. gods help us on election day when the frothing nazi masses of trump followers get all ginned up and start “observing” voters. something awful is going to happen, i am 100% convinced. and the “internet vs. real” fools are going to look around gape-mouthed like HOW COULD THIS HAPPEN?

uh, dumb-asses? they’ve been planning it all in plain sight right in front of you, written down and visible on a screen.

so yeah. 20 years in, the internet and i are in a strange place. obviously, i see its value; that’s how you’re reading my words, after all. but good hell. one false move and it’s all over. i’m a boring 30-something with no nudes or salacious back story, but i still have family and a bank account. even i catch myself sometimes before i tweet something or write something, lest i end up being taken viral someday and getting hacked, doxxed, worse.

this is the reality we created for ourselves. we took this amazing conduit of possibilities and turned it into… well, you can see it. people like to say that the internet created this stuff, when they deign to acknowledge it at all. i don’t think that’s true. what the internet did is take human nature’s ugliest, darkest, most previously hidden aspects and splash it all over public. it gave the most awful impulses a home and ease of access to anyone and everyone they want to target. this is NOTHING new. it’s just public now. we can all see it.

now it’s on us to figure out what to do next.

PS: hillary clinton took a big first step towards cleaning this gutter, maybe, today.