Your mom on Facebook

Chris Miranda
Sep 3, 2018 · 5 min read

The euthanization of Club Penguin was a personal attack. Club Penguin was one of the last bastions of the old internet, the internet I grew up with. For many people my age, Club Penguin, Runescape, and MapleStory were our first forays into computer gaming and interacting with other people over the Internet. We grew up in these online playgrounds. These were our mean streets. Granted, I never played Club Penguin. But still, a part of me died along with it.

For the longest time, the Internet felt like it belonged to my generation. We had been empowered by the Internet: free to speak out about our feelings and sexual orientation on Tumblr, free to establish new social norms on Facebook, free to define ourselves on Instagram. We embarrassed ourselves all the damn time, but the only witnesses were our peers doing the same. We learned what these platforms could enable and evolved with them. This was us, archived forever (or at least until the database burns down).

“programming language codes” by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

The party’s over when your parents walk in. Everyone is always up in arms, full of complaints. They are embarrassing. They post ugly pictures. They post too often. Really, they just don’t get it. Our parents did not experience the Internet the same way we did. We adapted new social norms and rules.

I don’t believe that our parents are ruining social media. They just need to learn how to interact with it, the same way we did. Our parents’ adoption of the Internet, our Internet, is phase-shifted. They act the same as we did, just a couple years later.


Beyond Club Penguin

My next door neighbor introduced me to Myspace. He showed me his profile and explained how it worked. You could sign up, create your profile, and trick out your page with seemingly endless customizable widgets. He had some songs, his top friends list (I would later learn that this space was the It-list), and some cool animations. I lied about my age and signed up with my old AOL e-mail, eager to be cool too.

Some of my other friends were already on Myspace. We all added each other and built out our online social circles. Of course, I had to make a kick-ass page. I found as many cool animations and widgets as I could to really trick it out. I didn’t know at the time, but this was my first foray into coding (copy and paste, but what’s the difference).

With my page ready to go, I started posting all the time. The couple digital photos I had, random thoughts, way too detailed personal info, you name it. Thank goodness I can’t remember my login info; I don’t think I could look at my page without cringing to death. My first online middle school relationship happened on Myspace, in the clear for all to see. We lasted one day.

Not long after this, Myspace became a ghost town. Society had moved on to the big leagues. So had we. I joined Facebook just before starting High School, this time barely old enough to not lie.

“brown wooden house under white clouds” by Sarah Lachise on Unsplash

The New Frontier

As we migrated, we had a chance to start anew and rebuild. Facebook was just like Myspace, except for how it wasn’t. We couldn’t customize very much, nowhere near as much as the HTML boxes on Myspace. But we still needed that customization. At the start, this meant posting often. Soon after, it was “liking” funny pages or sharing things you thought were cool. It was an expression of self.

When camera phones became popular, the photos started to flow. Often these were “unfiltered” — a view into someone’s true self. There was no judgement and no need to curate your life. We were still ourselves. We were still learning how we should interact with the technology.

Soon, we were hooked. You could chat with friends, remake lost connections, play games, share content, and so much more. It seemed like the final form, the evolution of what technology should be. Facebook was our everything. We started posting less too. We began to curate. Why post all the pictures and share everything when we could select only the good times and the best pictures. Social media became a highlight reel. Instagram helped induce this, and Snapchat solidified it. One place for your ideal self, and another for reality.

“women takes photo inside building near people” by Ben Weber on Unsplash

For the new age holier-than-thous(myself included, I’m a hypocrite but I’m self aware), this signals the toxicity of social media and the world we built for ourselves. But we were always destined for this world. Generations before us have faced the same problems, by many different names. Some may call it “keeping up with the Jones” or “affluenza” but it’s always the same: pursuing an image of social status, wealth, or whatever you desire modeled after someone you see with that image who sees someone else with that image and so forth. This is the world we live in today, the culmination of years of evolution and the death and growth of multiple platforms.


Considering our trajectory, we’re left to wonder whether anyone else will experience the same. If Facebook is the endgame, is this it? Will children today ever experience the days of shitposting on their wall if they’re born into a culture with Facebook “norms”? Yet, under our nose our parents have been experiencing this all along.

Our parents are still pure. They still know only the wonders of social media. They’re connecting with relatives and old friends. They share all sorts of photos: ugly, baby, blurry, graceful. But they aren’t sharing these photos for the likes or for their aesthetic. They just want people to see them. They want to share and experience the connection and exposure the Internet brings. When your mom tags you in the 53rd photo at the dinner table, she is not doing it to ruin your aesthetic and embarrass you. She just doesn’t know any better; or more appropriately, she hasn’t been conditioned to care about the aesthetic. She just fucking loves you.

My dad is on Instagram now, he’s been on it for about a year. That puts my parents about at 2014, if I consider my own timeline. Looking back at my feeds, this is when activity on social media goes into a slump. I stopped posting as much and stopped sharing every waking moment. In a way, we entered our cocoons and prepared to emerge as beautiful, curated butterflies. My parent’s have started posting less too, and so have others’.

I’m worried that they’ll do the same as I did. I do not want to see my parents become obsessed over likes and follows, over “insta-hour” or what photo/filter look best, over where the best photos can be taken. I want more “tags” at dinner and blurry dinner table pictures. I want more shitposts. I want more innocence. But it’s too late.

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