Tackling Loneliness Through Internet Culture
How I found passion for humanity during my harsh homeschool isolation, all through the magic of the internet.
Isolation and Exploration
2020 was a very tumultuous year for just about every high school student, but especially for homeschool students like me, who began learning from home for even the several school years after the big quarantine. Throughout my homeschool career, I spent my time researching my personal interests, namely “internet culture,” or the ways people tend to interact with each other in exclusively online spaces, and found myself captivated by the concept. Now that almost all of my social interaction was taking place on the internet, I noticed the differences between my online social life and my “real life” one.
Every viral post, minor comment, or convoluted ironic joke you see online is thought up by an individual person through their own lived experiences.
A World of its Own
Spending any amount of time on the internet makes it apparent that online culture is a whole world of its own. But, it’s important to note that there are always people behind the screen and unique intent behind the words you read. It’s a type of sonder* that’s easily obscured by the internet’s forces of anonymity and simplicity: Every viral post, minor comment, or convoluted ironic joke you see online is thought up by an individual person through their own lived experiences. Thus, the study of internet culture is essentially an indirect study of human culture, and has become intrinsic to the human experience as a whole.
When I slowly examined the contrast between my online and offline life, I noticed my fluctuating social capacity, due to feeling more open and sociable behind a screen than in reality. When this realization collided with my ideas about the internet’s place in human culture, I made the valuable realization that, to me, humans are inherently made to experience their lives with one another. Even through screens and anonymous personas, we interact, joke, share things, and communicate using the technology we’ve created, with both the good and the bad coming through. We’re always hanging out with each other, one way or another. I just think that’s neat and, honestly, really beautiful!
Humans are inherently made to experience their lives with one another.
Friendship Offline and On
Despite my harsh circumstances, I used the internet to find a passion and appreciation for humanity that helped me eventually return into public school with an excitement to pick my offline social life back up and make new friends.
I think my series of personal realizations proves that even in lonely, draining experiences, such as a pandemic-induced high school career of complete isolation, working with one’s resources and engaging wholeheartedly in seemingly trivial things like internet interactions can help anyone improve their outlook.
Pursuing internet culture — especially when my world was one of isolation — really helped me remember what I liked about not only being around other people, but being a human in the first place.
Zoie Jordan is a senior at YVHS who likes people and art.
