My Digital Derive — Tyler Fitton
Before beginning my descent down the endless corridors of hyperlinks and memes, I first had to think of a place to start, which was very easily the toughest part. Would I begin on Reddit? No, there just is not enough of a concrete thread to start in. Just go on Google and hit “I’m feeling lucky”? Hell yeah! That sounds cool! Oh wait. Somehow, I had never noticed that they just up and removed that button at some point in the past. Okay, well where else could I go? Twitter? Amazon? TINDER? The suspense was killing me, but finally, I was able to make my decision on a gem from my past. iFunny.
When I arrived at the gates of my old home, I expected to feel a beautiful feeling of nostalgia for the days gone that I had spent with my friends eagerly waiting for the 20 “Featured” memes of the day to hit. I did not. This was not because the iFunny I had known and loved was gone. Quite the opposite. It was quite literally the exact same as it had been nearly a decade ago. The same colors. The same logo. Even the same memes that, at one point in my life, made me laugh harder than anything could. I had seen enough, so I left.
My next trip, was to a website even FURTHER in my past. This one was able to keep me for a while.
The website was called Scratch, a site created by MIT as a way for easy, early development of games, animations, and the likes. This was the first online community that I have EVER belonged to. To my absolute astonishment, logging in to my own profile, I not only discovered that the website and my account still exist, but that there were actually people who still interacted with it. My last project was over a decade old at this point, and within the past year over 15 people had liked, commented, or reposted my project. I must say, this is where I spend the rest of my Derive.
Exploring the archives of an internet I used to know. It was amazing to see. Attached is my notifications tab with the interactions and the dates that they happened. It was quite bitter sweet. I knew that this internet was over, but that the 10 year old me who scoured that site would be proud to see what I am doing today. Then, I never thought I would become a creative, but now that it is my passion, it makes it all worth while for me. I spent time back then making what you could barely even call “games”, but that did not matter to me. I was creating. Seeing that not only these projects still exist, and that more kids that age can try their hand at making them, but that there are still people who find the time to somehow find these and interact with them makes it all worth it in the end. I find myself constantly in stress about whether or not anyone sees, or will see the things I create. I can safely say now that they absolutely do.
