A Brief History of My Social Media Brainrot

At what point is it just, like, maybe I find a hobby instead

it must be said that I didn’t make this but this is very much the vibe

Look, we all know why we’re here right now, right? How many newsletters have you subscribed to in the last week, how many posts have you been sent where authors tell you that we’re trying our best to be less supportive of, y’know, All Of That, but also we rely on social to find readers and to let readers find us and also to just, like, have friends??

I have alexithymia, which means I struggle to understand my emotions as I’m feeling them. Instead, I tend to go through the present moment in this sort of neutral, gray space, and then later on get hit with a huge wave of feeling and have to figure out where it came from. It was especially intense for me when I was a teenager: it’s hard enough to have teen emotions, but when you can’t sort through them in the moment, it meant oscillating between feeling nothing and feeling everything. Years after I graduated high school, my now-wife and I were in my home town. We happened to drive past my high school and, while stopped at a red light just in front of it, I burst into tears when my wife casually asked are you okay? Sobbing, I replied I was so lonely. I was so sad the whole time.

Bleak! And not exactly true; I had great friends in high school and I did a lot of the typical things you imagine high school kids doing (minus dating or any physical contact with pretty much anyone unless you count that one time my friends Carl and Katherine and I all shared a bed while drunk and I slept on Carl’s arm and it choked me out all night and I was just like is this the future I’m so sweaty). But I also had interests and obsessions and, even though I would have rather diieeeeeeeeed than admit it, ✨ desires ✨ that didn’t align with those friends, and that did leave me feeling super lonely a lot of the time, as it turns out!

You see where I’m going with this: where does a lonely kid with super niche, super intense interests go in the early 2000s/2010s? Hell the internet!!!! So, in the spirit of the question I’ve been asking myself all week (“where the hell do we all even GO now????”) I present: a retrospective of all the social media platforms I’ve sunk actually, seriously, genuinely years of my life into. (Note that I’m not including Twitter even though I had my account for SIXTEEN YEARS before I deactivated it this week, or Facebook or Instagram because I’m still Grappling, okay???)

1. Neopets

2005-2010

Positives:

• Were you even a kid in the early 00s if you didn’t get a bit too into Neopets for a while? Answer: yes, actually, as it turned out most kids who went outside did not have this phase

• The highlight of my LIFE up until that point was when we went on vacation to Florida and I got to go to Limited Too and buy the Neopets stuffed animals that got you in-game rewards

• I know this is a joke people tell a lot now but I did genuinely learn the basics of coding via Neopets. And also Twilight!! I read Twilight based on the recommendation of the Neopets books forum

Negatives:

• My dad took the internet router to work with him for a week because I had a melt-down when my parents tried to take me out for dinner while I was spinning the Wheel of Monotony

• Started a bunch of guilds with people that never took off and ended up panic blocking them in shame

• Stole hundreds of thousands of neopoints from my more successful irl friends via learning their passwords, going into their accounts, sending myself all their money, and then changing their passwords so they couldn’t see what I’d done

2. TV.com

2007-2008

Positives:

• My first time actually interacting with other people who were equally weird about liking things (the things in particular were Total Drama Island and iCarly at the time)

• I ran an extremely popular “create your own TDI episode” thread where people took turns writing pages of a script for a new episode

• When I thought things were getting too weird I made Courtney wake up from a dream and retconned the whole thing and somehow I wasn’t forcibly removed

Negatives:

• There was this one moderator on the iCarly forum who ran that place like SEAL Team 6, which is to say not necessarily effectively but definitely in a way that made you understand that it was her defining personality trait

3. LiveJournal

2008-2010

Positives:

• COME OOONNNNNNN, IT’S LIVEJOURNAL!!!!! I migrated here from TV.com after learning there was a better iCarly community and then stuck around for Glee

• This was my first experience in a legit online community and I have absolutely no notes, I had a blast and everyone was so sweet and welcoming and protective (“protective?” I hear you ask. Just wait.)

• The Glee fic on LJ was, for whatever reason, SO MUCH BETTER than it was on ff.net or ao3. Little Numbers!!! A Change in The Weather!!!! There was also a Kurtofsky (sorry!!) one that I loved but can’t remember the name of!!!!

• Learned a whole lot about human sexuality via the Glee Kink Meme. Some might say too much, but those people are nerds.

• Growing Up Cullen, just like in general

Negatives:

• While the people who would say my young eyes saw too much are nerds, they are also most likely correct

• Ultimately left because Dan Schneider had infiltrated the iCarly community and was being, and I cannot stress this enough, a complete fucking weirdo

• The older members of the community essentially expelled him

• I was interviewed for Quiet On Set like three times

• It’s whatever

4. Polyvore

2008-2013

Positives:

• If I could access Polyvore right now, that would be IT. I’d delete all social media except for Polyvore and I’d never be sad again

• Just a genuinely FUN PLACE where you could be as cringe as humanly possible and it was beautiful

• Had a brief brush with fame because I’d used a photo of Chloe Moretz in a set and they put it on the main blog

Negatives:

• There was this big role-playing group called Graham Bell Prep that were like elite and no one was allowed to join them and for a VERY long time if I saw an item on Polyvore that said “GBP” I assumed they’d tagged it for their own use and didn’t use it

• It actually meant Great British Pounds and I’m a little stupid

• Also had some very sexual role-play moments with people who, in hindsight, were definitely adult men

5. Tumblr

2010-2017

Positives:

• Truly what do I even SAY about tumblr!!! The first place I felt interesting the first place I felt hot the first place I came out!!!!!

• My wife accuses me of having a tumblr girlfriend every single time the word is even breathed, and I can say before god and my handful of substack subscribers (which includes my wife, I checked) that was VERY MUCH not the case but honestly tumblr I love you and if everyone was suddenly like “actually the only place you can market a book now is tumblr” i truly believe my next book would list

• To further prove the fact that I firmly did not have a tumblr girlfriend I will say that I wasn’t in aesthetic tumblr but rather glee tumblr followed by one direction tumblr and while there were a lot of gay people in both of those spaces we were all, without exception, horrible

Negatives:

• One time someone told me to kill myself because I said that I thought a bts picture from a glee episode looked like the scene was set in a restaurant (it was)

• It fell in popularity at the same time that I rose in hotness and I feel like I really could have made a name for myself as some kind of gay tumblr hot girl

• I was also briefly in what I now believe to be a cult

I feel like I could elaborate way too much on any one of these, but I won’t because I’m trying to see if people actually hearing from me in this format and I’m not trying to tempt fate too much. DO we like this format?? I’m into it I think?? Can we keep it up and can I use this to tell you about my books?? I’d love that let’s do that??? maybe??? yes?????