I do not remember being an impressionable child. But, this is not about that.
I only had a friend or two and spent most of my holiday time engrossed in my little hobbies of drawing, music, and reading. At boarding school, I always sat at the back of the class and never engaged much. P.S.: I think my former classmates will disagree, but I am the storyteller here. Any kind of extrovert characterisation they witnessed on my part was because I was presented with something I could not find an excuse to decline like a part in a play or dance. Too bad that part of me was never nurtured. I have some awesome vocals and my hips never lied but that’s a story for another day. I lived like a hermit for most of my childhood; withdrawn from classmates, spending most of my time in my head, wishing I had somewhere to put my thoughts; a place of rest for my colourful, buzzing mind.
I was first introduced to the Internet in 2003 by our teacher of geography. I was not the only green bean in the pod because when asked whether we knew what a search engine was, only three of fifty-five students raised their hands. He went on to tell us that it was something you could ask anything. This was our moment of enlightenment. My baby mind could not comprehend this invisible thing that knew it all. If it was an actual engine, it had to be something like a car engine but bigger like a bulldozer with unique pulley systems and such to collect data. As you can see, the perception I had of the internet then equates to the perception I have of quantum mechanics today…which is zero. My mind was overstimulated by this knowledge of the internet’s existence. “What do I want to find?” it pondered. My mind could not focus on any one thing it wanted to know when given a chance to meet this invisible engine (sometimes I wish my mind had stayed that way). It was greenly overwhelmed. Anyway, the teacher went ahead to inform us that only the brightest students were allowed to use the computers in the school lab.
It’s hard to believe I was never the brightest student yet I night-owled the mostest. Sorrows, sorrows, prayers. But whatever!
I do not remember thinking about the internet again not even in 2004 when an acquaintance created for me a Yahoo email address using her mother’s work computer. The ones with the big backside that took forever to load. I do not remember using that email at the time because one: I only had her email address and had nothing to share; and two: I did not know how to send an email; and three: I could not remember the password, so it was never used until 2009 when I went to university.
At first, it was hard to navigate the internet and understand that not everything was literal. I ended up on many dodgy sites as one does in the presence of such vast knowledge with no control nor self-control. Since I was not receiving many emails, I subscribed to many Yahoo groups ending up in an entanglement of chain mails. I forwarded many crazy emails because I did not want bad luck to fall upon my family. I lost loads of assignments because I did not know how to attach files or save a Word document. I joined pen-pal groups and discovered the strangeness in humanity, and I mean strangeness. People can be creative. Thank God, I am not as gullible as I used to be. I created a Facebook account and sent trillions of friend requests including people outside of the people-I-know bubble. Today you can be banned for sending too many requests. I think that I am still an “accept friend request” on many celebrities’ lists. I was on a roll but never a troll. I lie. I tried trolling once on Twitter; when twitter was still a featherless bird, but I was humbled real quick. I am not good at comebacks, snapbacks, clapbacks, or any other form of back. Also, it’s hard work to troll. I’m a lazy texter who only replies in smiley emojis. I was emojifying when emojis were still mere hieroglyphs.
Now that my super imaginative mind had found a bottomless pit to pour itself into, I started sharing everything and I mean everything. Thank God, I had nothing to my name then. I still have nothing to my name now, but the difference is that I understand the internet and technology. In fact, call me Sensei InTech from now on.
I used to watch anime on YouTube when one episode was divided into thirty parts, and you could only watch it in a small corner of the page. The first game I played was Plants and Zombies, not the commoner’s Solitaire and Tetris. Strangely, I never became a gamer. It is a shame indeed. I have this insane love for collecting music not on physical CDs and such apps as Spotify. I am very old school. I used to download music from suspicious websites making my computer a cesspool of viruses. One time, I got this virus that multiplied everything on my computer and ate up my little space. I restored factory settings, but that virus refused to give me a break. I was fuming that I took it to a computer-wiz friend who butchered its internal mechanics. I invested in quality external drives for my content so when a computer decides to go ape sh!t on me again, it is not an effing burden to reload it all. Do not tell me cloud this, cloud that. Old school! Besides, I carry way too much weight in photography that saying I am a photography fanatic is an understatement.
I joined many platforms and shared loads of thoughts, photographs, poems, art, songs, and thoughts-I-thought-I-thought thoughts. I had various blogs and pages and joined almost every creative corner and social media platform I could grasp. I drained my inner voice to a crisp. I drained myself. It all stopped making sense. I desperately needed a life pause, and it came chaotically wrapped in 2020 when all we had was time on our hands but no content. P.S.: I refused to learn the TikTok dances. It was just more cardio, and the spirit was not feeling it. I decided to lessen my internet presence. There were too many outputs for one of me. It was time to dial back a notch, but Lord, it was a can of worms. What was young me thinking? After weeks to no end of back and forth downloading a decade’s worth of content from several pages, wiping my scent off various platforms, I sank. It was too much. I really do not know why I never had backups of my old work. It would have been easier. Also, I could not be bothered with unsubscribing from tons of websites. I accepted my fate that my internet footprint was for life. Currently, I use these subscriptions to keep my ancient email addresses on life support. Occasionally I log in and delete all.
I wish I could remember what my first search was on the internet. It must have been something totally unhinged and not close to the search dreams I had had in 2003. Now that I know what I can use it for, I need to thank young me. She had a very courageous mind. She might have known that adult me would need some of these websites to remind herself why she loved writing so much, find a home for her inner voice, find inspiration in chain emails especially the ones about art and poetry, have virtual albums for her gazillions photographs on social media, and quit being the lonesome girl in that back of the class.
I am still a physical hermit but a virtual world extrovert.
Till next time
~Evelyn Nec
RANDOM THOUGHTS 