This is a history. If you only came for photos, scroll all the way down to the carousel. Joke’s on you, though, because there are no captions…!
I learned how to use the internet in elementary school. I can’t remember if we started going to Computers (this was the name of the “class”, I can’t make this up) in first grade (that would make me, like, 6-7 years old) or third grade (I would be, like, 9). Regardless, it was in the 90s, and for those of you who are unaware, the public internet was launched in 1991.
That’s right, folks, yours truly is older than the world wide web… sort of. I’m older than, as I noted above, the public internet. That is, the internet was actually developed in 1960 and was used by the government to be able to transfer data over a network, allowing their computers to “talk” to each other. In 1991, the internet’s doors were opened to the masses, roughly three years after I slid down the chute and out into this world.
ANYWHOO…
I remember walking single file from our classroom to the computer lab where the computer teacher (who was also my Challenge (yes, this was also a name used; it was the gifted & talented program) teacher) would allow us to choose a boxy Mac (later a sleek, colorful iMac) to sit at and do stuff. Sometimes we had lessons, like writing a “paper” (like two poorly structured paragraphs with erroneous syntax and nonsensical subjects) in the proprietary word processing application to teach us how to type on a keyboard and sometimes we spent the hour playing games. The class favorite was always Oregon Trail or messing around on KidPix.
In our older years, we were taught how to access the internet…I have vague recollection, because it wasn’t every class period, and quite honestly, I’m tempted to take back my opening statement about learning how in elementary school.
When I was somewhere in my late single-digits, my mom started taking me up the street once or twice a week to the OTHER elementary school (the one I DIDN’T go to because of small-town politics and weird town divisions) so I could get books from their night library. It was there I could freely play on the computers and really explore the internet. I remember the woman who operated the night library—Mrs. Barbara Vincent. She was really nice, and as far as I know, she still lives in town not too far from us. I walk/drive by her house sometimes and wonder how she is.
Mrs. Vincent would always help me on the computer if I needed it, and it was there I learned the internet housed games. I couldn’t tell you what games I played online at that age, but I can tell you every little thing I did at home on the internet in later years.
When I was turning 13, my parents decided they had enough money to make an investment—they bought a family computer for my birthday that could connect to the internet AND—they were going to BUY internet. Well, you know, subscribe.
To clarify, we already had a family computer, but it was not hooked up to the internet (lol) and was used solely to play games and enjoy. Mom played a block busting game as well as Mah-Jongg (and she would play these games LATE INTO THE NIGHT… LOL) and I had mostly CD-ROM games (remember those?!) like Gus Goes to Cybertown and Gus Goes to Cyberopolis as well as some dollar store titles like Lighthouse.
I was told the new computer was for homework and I was to keep the games on the old computer.
Ahem.
My parents decided on AOL as our ISP. My dad set it up, and, well, let’s just say I wish we were all a bit more educated on dial-up BEFORE setting up because this was during the time of long-distance charges/pay-per-minute. During the AOL setup, it asks you to choose two local numbers. My dad was thinking local like distance/time in terms of where the number is located (it went by town) instead of will this be considered long distance because it’s not the town we live in? I will save the story about the first and only time I got grounded thanks to dial-up for another time.
The first time we dialed-up was like a monumental time in our household’s history. I sat in front of the new Gateway desktop, my parents behind me and—
BEEP-BOO-BRRRRRRP-BEEEEEEEEP-BRRRRRRP-KADUNG-KADUNG-KADUNG-KRRRRRRR… or something to that effect.
And then…? The AOL desktop browser loads and the rest is history.
All that to say I’ve been on social media for 21 years.
T W E N T Y - O N E Y E A R S …
Throughout middle school, I LIVED on the family computer, only getting off to let my mom or dad use it for whatever thing they needed and while I was at school. I was constantly in chat rooms, looking at websites, playing games, and the summer following our sudden connection to the rest of the world, I asked to go to the county library where I borrowed two books on HTML and taught myself how to code.
I remember sitting at my desk, and somehow had both books (one was HTML for Dummies—10/10 recommend) sprawled wide open at the same time on the tiny desk. I spent hours poring over the pages and following the exercises.
I coded my first site before I was 14—complete with tables, images, animated text, cursor trails, and music from whatever anime I was into at the time. Eat that, MySpace.
MySpace… I was on there! I was also on Xanga and LiveJournal. When YouTube launched, I was on there as a content creator (we weren’t called that back then) and when Facebook opened up to those who were not in college I jumped on that bandwagon. I was on AIM daily, and would sometimes leave the computer/internet on (we had switched to Comcast at this point…lol) with an away message that I was at school. Well, until my dad noticed the computer was still on and turn it off.
I got an invite for Gmail and in turn handed out invites. I later joined Google+ and carefully constructed my circles. I posted art on deviantART and while I didn’t have a tumblr account, would hop on there every so often. Last.fm became a permanent start-up app with the audioscrobbler sharing with the world every song I listened to, most of them obtained by alternate means (I’m looking at you LimeWire, Kazaa, and FrostWire…oh, and you, too, BitTorrent…).
By the time I graduated college, I found my way to Twitter—140 characters of bullshit, YES! Shortly before I moved into my first apartment, I ended up on Instagram, and sometime after that, Snapchat, where my only friend was my cousin, Brenda, who is, like, i dunno, 17 years my senior or so? Both of us would snap each other and be like, this app is so dumb.
Reddit, Pinterest (i…I don’t like Pinterest), Foursquare, LinkedIn, Vimeo (100% not as entertaining as YouTube), Yelp, Behance, and yes… GAIA ONLINE.
And after 21 years of being online and overly connected… I realized I’ve poisoned myself.
My dad passed in early 2013, which put me in the craziest mental tailspin ever. Prior to that I was upbeat, happy, awesome, successful.
When he was gone, I was suddenly lost with no map (yes, I can read a map). I felt like I was making mistakes left and right and was no longer successful, awesome, or happy. I ended up in a four year relationship that stripped me of everything - finances, emotions, feelings, love, self-worth. I was abused verbally, emotionally, and mentally. Physically probably wasn’t too far behind. While I had friends and my mom, I also had social media, which became closer to me than those who were actually close to me.
Social media was the most toxic thing in my life during and after that relationship. It was a drug. I was on it ALL. THE. TIME. It was temporary relief.
I started using it as an outlet, forgetting too many people could see my angst, depression, frustration, and business that really should have been kept to myself. I thought it was helping, but frankly, I’m pretty sure it was hurting.
Eventually, a light could be seen at the end of the tunnel. I was able to pull myself out with a little help and I was on the road to recovery, but social media was still there and so was I.
I started to progress and felt successful again. I was doing well at work, everyone saw a change in me after I left my ex, and I was the person everyone knew and loved again. I got raises and more responsibilities. My paychecks were now mine and I could see friends whenever and I could attend family functions without guilt or harmful wonder.
I was fired from the job I held for 1.5 weeks shy of 5 years.
It didn’t depress me. The only thing about it that upset me was my employer beat me to the punch. I was supposed to leave before I was asked to.
Not too long after, I picked up what I thought would be a dream job—it crossed things off my goal list: work in NYC, make good money, be a designer…
I hated it.
I hated every single minute of it. Three months into the gig, I started looking for a new job. I was frustrated, stressed, confused—how does a company run this way? No one seemed to listen or give a shit and if I brought up an issue, it’s mine and I have to figure it out.
Social media helped me show the positives of what I was doing, but the one time I shared a thought about how I handle being yelled at by an employer as commentary on a shared post on LinkedIn during the day, I was reprimanded because the boss clearly felt offended and suddenly decided I was messing around and not working... While this is a story for another time, I would post once in a while during the day, usually a share, with no issue. If anything, the boss would react or comment on whatever I posted, never batting an eyelash at the timestamp. This wasn’t a usual occurrence, but the one time he felt attacked, would be my guess, is the one time it was an issue. Prior to being made aware the boss knew, I deleted the post because I decided it was against better judgment.
Nine months into this job, I submitted a resignation letter and no one there stopped me. No one asked why this was coming out of the blue. Instead, I got false well-wishes, and empty keep-in-touches. I even got yelled at by a colleague who was upset I was leaving and she had no one to help her get drawings done when there was a studio full of overworked project managers who, like me, doubled as studio designers. I was told by the studio manager that my last day would be earlier than my written end date so I wouldn’t have to ship back my equipment since I’d be in-office. While that makes sense, I also feel like it wasn’t the whole reason.
At this point, I couldn’t turn to social media. I was growing up and maturing and was no longer airing dirty laundry because I realized no one wanted to see that. No one really cared. It was attention-seeking. And most importantly, it could hurt my chances at getting a new job. By that point, I had already deactivated my Facebook after 12 years of being on the platform. Why?
Because I was tired of seeing people’s dirty laundry. I was tired of people misinforming others. I was finally seeing what social media had become…or maybe what it was all along. I understood.
Since then, due to a series of events, I fell back into a depression. The difference between last time and this time was I didn’t cry myself to sleep and pray every night to not wake up again, though I would pass comments that I know I would be better off dead.
And still, social media was there for me. Twitter increased the tweet character limit from 140 to 240, which meant I had more letters I could use up to scream into the void.
I felt like a failure after feeling liberated, all part of this depression.
I was educated with no job. I was about to be educated again.
I was unemployed from July 2019 to December 2020. I ran out of money and because the state denied me unemployment, I was frantic and this only added to my depression. My now fiancé supported me during this time.
This new job I picked up kind of fell into my lap and at first I didn’t think for myself to apply, but after some nudging, I did. Not because I dreamed of working call center, but because I needed income badly. Not just for bills, but to fix the problem I created with the State of NJ.
I eventually floated out of the heavy depression, but I was still sad all the time and like… over it. Over life.
Over a month ago, I decided to do it. I pulled the plug on social media. I tweeted to my followers that I was taking a month-long break. I needed to detox. I also let my friends on FB know…the FB I opened after two years of being Meta-celebate. The rest of my friends/followers on other platforms would figure it out.
At first, I was bored. I needed to find other things to do.
So I started reading again. I finished two books already. Am trying to work on a third, but that’s another story.
I’ve been tinkering with my website and my identity.
I have job applications going out every other day, if not daily.
I’m enjoying myself, friends, family. Hobbies…
And while I’m still struggling with a lot of things, like the job search, I feel better.
Things happened while I was away from social media:
I got engaged
I lost 20 lbs since January, but moreso while off social media
I got rejected for every position I applied for at the company where I work (including the graphic design position)
I sobbed on the hour-long drive home after learning I got beat out by someone for the GD position because of one piece of experience they had that I didn’t.
I’m in the same department at work, just on a new team
I celebrated my first Accoversary
No one congratulated me at work on my first Accoversary (lol)
I did my own nails. Twice. And I’m not mad at them
I earned my Google Analytics for Beginners certificate
I had dinner with my mom almost every night I was home without sitting on social media
I ate ice cream cake without posting it on social media
I started a lacto-pescatarian diet
I got my hair dyed for the first time (what a disaster)
I became aware
Not all of it is positive and that’s OK.
I learned a lot about myself and the world around me. With this post, I guess I’m going to make the formal announcement that I will be stepping away from LinkedIn as well. I kept the app on my phone for the job search, but to be completely honest, as people are using it more and more as a regular social media platform, I’m finding it’s depressing me seeing everyone else’s successes while I’m still feeling like a total failure. SO, I will be taking a different approach to my job search and seeing how I fare with that.
My LI profile will still be intact, and I may come on desktop to update things, career-wise… I will be leaving the “#opentowork” banner on my photo, but will more or less be inactive on the platform for a while.
As far as other social media, I think I will reserve it for desktop use only. Eventually, when I’m in a better state I will come back, maybe in full swing.
Anyone on there who wants to keep in touch, which is literally no one (hahaha), will know another way to find me.
10/10 recommend social media detox. It does wonders. :)
