it’s interesting to me how few people these days either can believe or actually remember how marginal the internet was to “the real world” until about 2012-2013. like yes many people were ON it and did communicate through it, but until social media really took off (and this was post-myspace bc while many people were on myspace, it didn’t have NEARLY the reach of something like facebook) the “real world” was fairly insulated from the online world at least in most obvious respects. and to a certain extent, trying to bridge the gap between the online world and the “real world” was viewed with intense suspicion or mockery.
like i’m always reminded of the 2004 movie napoleon dynamite where one of the subplots and running jokes is about kip, napoleon’s brother, and his online girlfriend and the weirdness of them dating online. like…….this joke WOULD NOT LAND in the same way in this day and age bc like one of the main ways people date these days IS in fact online
i generally feel Very online but then sometimes I’ll hear about a meme from usually specifically tiktok or roblox and feel like im in a tide pool and i just came across a sudden very steep dropoff and there are just all these low and distant roars echoing out of the dark
making good posts used to be a thing insane people did. and now it is the only possible way to advance in a career in hundreds of professional industries
if youre a hairstylist you gotta advertise it on instagram. tattooist. instagram. writer. performer. visual artist. therapist. all on instagram. lots of bars make their bartenders advertise their shifts on story posts to try and lure customers in, these days. every fucking job you can possibly do, you have to be a personal social media manager for, and be as active in the world of digital representation and engaged in the discourse as only the most suicidal graduate students of 2012 were
