Basement Whatever

“Perhaps it’s just nostalgia, but despite having “little to hide,” I recall a better way to use the internet. My interest in the internet as a kid was entirely exploratory, rather than performative. Bored out of my suburban small-town mind, I wanted to play Starcraft and learn random things and chat on IRC with new people around the world who shared my interests. The content-clout-access-alpha treadmill that Packy McCormick smartly observes did not yet exist.

“Why was that pseudonymous presence on the internet better? Social media platforms have made all of us minor celebrities, and celebrity is an unpleasant thing. Celebrity psychology is fundamentally anxious, burdening us with constant performance, self-consciousness and self-censorship. We all become shades of Princess Diana, looking over her shoulder for the paparazzi. It limits our sense of self, and our self-expression.

“There may be a light at the end of the tunnel for anyone that seeks an escape. I believe we are going to see the opposite of the context collapse of the internet today. I call it identity dispersion, where individuals control the creation, separation and unification of their multiple online selves.”

I think this topic will become more and more prevalent as the years go on, and we develop tools to manage our online selves.