When “The Internet” Really Means “My Internet.”

I learned a lot at my first XOXO, but the key realization was about my own biases.

This was originally just a tweet. It read:

The best thing I learned at XOXO was that when I say “the internet” I’m really only thinking about *my* internet, and that’s a huge mistake.

It comes out to a perfect 140 characters and I could just post it and start drinking. But if I keep it only on *my internet*, I’ll be continuing the very thing I realized I’m newly psyched to escape.

One of the truly wonderful things about this conference is that it makes the theme of inclusion on the internet — and in its absence, harassment — really explicit. And the other truly wonderful thing about this conference is that it’s a first-person conference where the “I” has less to do with skills and visions for the industry and more to do with love, and mistakes, and hope, and failure.

So I’m going to beat myself up for a little longer and hope that you, person who I’m not “connected to” already on the internet, will keep me accountable.

In the spirit of a conference that so brilliantly highlights the problems and lovingly challenges us to solve them, I am going to admit that romanticizing *my internet* often makes me part of the problem.

I’m not someone that “makes” things in the strict XOXO sense of directly producing art and technology. So when it comes to Java or digital comics, I have gaps. But like many of us, I say “the internet” a lot and consume as much of it as I can. The place I love to work is a technology company; I’ve made some truly great friends “on Twitter.”

And yet I’d never “heard of” Zoe Quinn. Of Akilah Hughes. Of Kathy Sierra. Of Rami Ismail. Of Amit Gupta.

We all have our little internet worlds. They have their own jokes and references and often different rules. No one can belong to all at once. This is not harmful, this is normal. Just because you might not be active in Poetry Twitter doesn’t mean you’re a hater of the arts. You’re just more likely to follow who your colleagues follow and build your network around your profession. And no one has time to keep up with everything on ProductHunt or Comedy Twitter.

You have your internet and I have mine.

Having a defined community also makes it easier to have an audience in mind who you like making things for. This is great. It’s easy to think your internet is the best one; you’re probably outraged if your boyfriend has a different one and still doesn’t know who your favorite founder/artist/blogger is.

But here’s the thing about *my internet*: The seriously life-changing lineup of speakers I didn’t know at this year’s XOXO got me to realize that having *my internet* makes me judge everyone else’s. It quickly became clear that my gaps were often actually biases against people like “gamers” or “podcast bros” or “web 1.0 engineers” [insert niche online community here] who I, dangerously, saw as a homogenous other. That tendency, no matter how you justify it because of how the web works, sucks.

It’s this playful notion of *my internet* and *your internet* that might be keeping us away from improving *our internet*.

If you came into the conference loving any of the keynote speakers I named above, you’re probably looking at me like I’d look at you if told me that you hadn’t heard of the one speaker *I* was most excited about: Mallory Ortberg from The Toast. Mallory is a literary media startup person, which unlike gaming, or YouTube comedy, or CSS, is basically my sweet spot internet thing. If you start your own company and it has to do with words and ideas, I’ll learn everything about you.

Yes: being able to belong to online communities where you can be both yourself and maybe the next big thing, especially for anyone who faces structural inequality and prejudice, is totally magic. But through the near-constant jolt of being so into talks by people whose references I didn’t get as easily, or whose outfit I’d never wear, or whose products weren’t ones I already used, I had to confront the flip side to this. And, even worse, realize that this fucked up brain SEO that ranks people in my brain is often projected onto other women.

The other popular use of “the internet” comes into play when we’re trying to lump together everyone but us who is making it a shitty place to be. But we can’t fall into the trap of thinking that it’s just the trolls that aren’t letting the web live up to its potential. And that means destroying the notions that make me feel like it’s either *my internet* or *the trolls*. Someone who also loves the internet but falls under a different sub-internet than you also needs a place, and that might take time and effort. If our lack of many shared references or friends make it so that we might not be part of the same events or follow each other on Twitter, that doesn’t mean we’re different, and that we don’t share an equal care for the internet.

So I’m going to follow the challenge presented here and use this to participate in making a better internet. No, I’m not a maker, but (sorry), maybe it counts if I challenge myself to “make” things better.

(No, *you’re* a badass.)