I'm updating my website right now. I love my website. Bringing one into being is something I'd wanted to do for a decade before making it happen in 2022. (Translating long-held plans into action is a major theme right now.) It came at the right time, when I have my artistic interests and the way I want to represent myself reasonably refined.
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| From the 'Your Ribbons' page on Bunny's old site |
Emilie Engel has a great site, too, and one of its projects is a survey on online life that I filled out last month. In honor of thinking about cyberspace today, I'm going to post my answers. The internet is a lot like life in that you shape it and it also shapes you.
Further reading:
- Aaron Swartz's Guerilla Open Access Manifesto
- Techgnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information by Erik Davis
- Manifestos for the Internet Age from Greyscale Press
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Reflecting on online life
Are you / have you ever been addicted to being online?
Yes
How old were you when you first started using the internet? What's your first memory online?
My tween years. I had a Xanga and LiveJournal, used AOL Instant Messenger, made Angelfire websites, and used Barbie MyDesign to make paper dolls (I'd print them out after I made them. I think I still have a binder of those printouts at my parents' house that I'd love to find).
What was the first website you remember using regularly?
Xanga/LiveJournal
What was the first website you used which involved making a "profile"? Not explicitly social media, i.e. my first was Club Penguin. What was the name of your first online persona? What were the characteristics? Did you have any running bits or outfits you liked? Activities you did?
AOL Instant Messenger. My username was cookiemnster7112. I don't remember my bios. I liked to chat with friends and amuse myself by talking to the chatbot SmarterChild. I didn't use chatrooms.
How old were you when you started truly using social media? (i.e. Facebook, Tumblr, MySpace, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) Do a little tracing for me. Where did you make your first profile? What was the first social media site you truly enjoyed using? What was your first online niche?
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| Tumblr header in 2014 |
My first online niche was alt lit 1.0, which I found in 2011 through my high school friend Cass' Facebook. She was internet friends with people like Crispin Best and the now-canceled Stephen Tully Dierks. I was really taken with how people were using language in that world and just kind of fell head over heels.
Did you ever run a stan/fan account? What was it dedicated to? What's a specific memory you have about it? Did you ever get free perks or connections to the thing/person you were obsessed with?
Lmao yeah when I was hypomanic in the winter of 2014-15, I had a Tumblr devoted to the theory that Louis and Harry from One Direction were gay and in love. A specific memory I have of that was that discovering this fan theory lifted me out of a depression and sustained me through that winter. The community was very silly, affectionate, nerdy, and deranged in a funny, innocent way. I made an internet friend through it who I'm still mutuals with on Instagram.
What's your favorite account you've run? What made it your favorite? Did you run it with people? Did you get a lot of clout? Did you feel fulfilled creatively?
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| My Instagram (screenshot 5 March 2024) |
What's the strangest thing you've witnessed online? Did the people/thing you saw have any idea you saw it?
This is a good question, because I feel like I've avoided a lot of the darker shit online (on purpose, because I am self-protective and squeamish). The strangest thing I ever saw was Hari Nef reacting emotionally on Tumblr to being anonymously bullied for being trans. She's pretty impervious now, it seems, as she's reached a level of success. This was before she was famous, in 2013 or 2014. It felt awkward and sad to witness, and I still feel weird thinking about it and wish I hadn't seen it.
What's the weirdest coincidence that's come to you online? Could be a missed connection, aligning of stars at an event, strange overlap between irl and online.
These are such good questions. The one that keeps coming to mind, even though I'm trying to think of one that's actually eerie/special and not cringe, is a run-in at Pitchfork Music Festival in 2015. The festival had these typewriters and a huge bulletin board to post irl 'missed connections' on. I wrote one for an internet friend I saw during the Waxahatchee performance. They saw it because I posted it to Instagram. Writing that out makes me want to die because of how 2015 it is, god.
Have you ever gotten a job/creative opportunity through your online presence? How did you get it? Did it work out?
I owe my life in the art world to Instagram, tbh.
Who's the most famous person who you are in regular contact with online? (Contact could just be viewing/replying to stories, liking posts). How did you connect? Do you like to share with others that this person follows you, or do you like to keep it low key? How do you feel about this person following you?
We aren't actively in touch aside from him following me, and I consistently forget that he does unless prompted to remember. But I love that he follows me and I love when I get to tell this story.
Do you feel your online persona a more true representation of yourself than your irl face? Or are they just both two parts that make up the whole of yourself? Or are neither real, lol?
Right now, and for the past few years, I feel it's a true representation of me. That's changed over time. From 2013-2016, I feel it was a more true representation than irl me was, because I was living an irl life that didn't match, like, the burning fire in my soul. From 2017-2020, I feel like it was a less true representation. I think I was trying to find a "community" during this time, so I was posting in an attempt to be part of a culture instead of in an attempt to represent myself. It wasn't necessarily dishonest, because it was what I wanted to be doing, but it was uncomfortable and I felt pretty repressed and inhibited. It didn't feel natural. In 2021, I went back to using social media in a way that feels germane to me, sort of diaristically and impressionistically. It's felt so good to return to that and sustain it. Now that my life is, for the most part, finally in concert with my soul (lmao), I feel the representation is simply true, rather than more true. The internet has been really helpful in getting me to a place where those two things are aligned.
Have you ever made friends online? Approximately how many internet friends do you have? You can count mutuals / people you're vaguely friendly with.
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| With Megan at The Echo (2016) |
Have you had an online romantic relationship? Have you had more than one? How many? Give us a little history if you feel so inclined.
I dated a guy on and off from 2020 to 2022 who I met through NYC Tinder but who I was mostly in touch with by text, to the extent it felt like an internet relationship. He used Twitter a lot and I used Instagram a lot, and we're both writers, so we were both accustomed to using written speech as a tool for genuine emotional connection. My friend called him my pocket boyfriend. Other than that, I had two flings that started virtually (one on Twitter and one via FaceTime - the guy was FaceTiming my friend while they were playing a video game, and I was in my friend's room watching them play, and we started talking after that).
Are you close with anyone you met online? How did you meet? How often do you talk? What do you have in common with this person?
Most of my friendships that originated online have a strong irl component now that I live in New York. I've been friends with two girls from the alt lit 1.0 world for 10 years now, both of whom live in the city. Currently I have a few friendships that are mostly based online. One is a sort of a mentorship relationship with a girl who's 19. It's big sister-little sister vibes. I helped her through a crisis once and she's said she admires my art and the life I've built. I feel protective of her and think she's got great taste and makes beautiful art. We are supportive of each other. And the relationship is special to me because when I was younger, I looked to older people online as role models too.
Do you have an online relationship with anyone you met irl first, and now you communicate frequently through DM/IG/Twitter/etc.? How did you meet? How often do you talk? How do you talk (through what app/medium)? What do you have in common with this person?
A few people I met through the New York art world but haven't had time to develop strong irl-based friendships with, I mostly talk to online through Instagram DM. I'd say our aesthetics overlap / we're drawn to similar ideas and art. We talk maybe once a week, sometimes more sometimes less, and it feels enjoyable, though sometimes I feel guilty that I'm not able to build stronger irl-based friendships with them.
Do you have anyone in your life who you met online first, but is now a friend/lover/presence in your irl? How did you meet? What do you have in common? How did you transition from online to irl?
Yeah, the two aforementioned NYC-based alt lit 1.0 friends are a good example. We met in Chicago in the summer of 2014 at a karaoke bar and have been friends ever since. We have writing and shared experiences in common.
Have you ever met someone online and then met up with them irl? How long did you talk online before meeting up? Did you travel to meet them / they travel to you? How far did you travel? What was it like seeing them for the first time? Describe specifics ... how old were you, what city were you in, what did you do together? Do you remember how it felt laying eyes on their real body? Could be romantic or platonic...
When I was 22, I met these three girls my age on Twitter who I immediately felt a kinship with, and we formed a little friend group. We had private Twitters that we only followed each other on, and there was just this immediate and intense outpouring of love; we talked every day, we kept up on each other's lives and thoughts, we were there for each other consistently through likes and replies and DMs. We were platonic but it felt romantic. We were really in a reverie having found each other.
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| The two girls from Iowa seeing the ocean for the first time, while visiting me and the NYC girl on the East Coast. I get emotional looking at this picture. There was a time when they really meant everything to me, and drifting apart from them as we aged and developed separate lives was hard. |
We met up for the first time in Chicago in summer 2014, I think, then saw each other again in the fall in Chicago and Iowa City, then spent the new year of 2014-15 together in New York. The New York girl and I hung out separately a few times, too, because we lived near each other. She came to my parents' house and I went up to her apartment.
It was interesting, meeting them. I was nervous. I felt like it couldn't be as good irl as it was online. Online felt so pure, just our thoughts and hearts communing. In person we had to contend with the ways we'd been socialized, with awkwardness, with the trouble humans sometimes have expressing secret thoughts in person, a pressure that is removed online. This was the first time I'd had an online friendship transition to irl and I didn't know how to do it; I stumbled through it. We all did, which was comforting in a way, but in some ways it sort of felt like we were torturing each other through our bodily presences and we couldn't wait to get back to looking at the screen.
I navigate all this differently now and there's no longer that fraughtness associated with it. But I do remember how it felt; it was very potent.
Do you have a preference meeting people online or meeting them irl? Which is a better way to make friends / have lovers, in your opinion?
I prefer meeting people irl, but I'm used to meeting them online. I think they're equally good ways to make friends, but I think lovers ideally should meet in person.
If you have an inclination for online relationships (as I do), why do you think that is? What about yourself is attracted to these situations?
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| A meme I recently made to make my boyfriend laugh. Chirping Flapping Sandpiper is a toy my cat likes to play with that we have developed an affection for |
Has anything ever happened to you that made you feel online relationships are less real/valid than irl ones? Have you ever done something crazy for someone online, only to pay the price for it later? Have you ever felt shame for being in an online relationship?
Yeah, the girl I moved in with in LA, who I knew from Twitter, stole $1,500 from me (she later paid me back). When that happened, for a time I was like, "fuck Twitter relationships. You don't really know these people."
Are online relationships and irl relationships the same? Are they both equally real? Is one more real than the other? Elaborate on that...?
They're not the same, but they're equally real. I'm one of those woo-woo people who believes we're souls having a human experience, and both irl and online relationships are those of two souls communing. I think the key difference is that irl relationships include awkwardness and because of that are more reality-based than fantasy-based. Though this girl I know of online Eliska once posted "internet is pure reality," which I think there's truth to. Nonetheless I think internet relationships are "smooth" while irl relationships include "friction," and being with / overcoming / accepting that friction creates more closeness. I learned this through that formative online friendship I had with three girls in my early twenties.
Anything else you want to share?
Just that I'm grateful for the internet and grateful for this questionnaire.
I like questionnaires. I recently filled out a different questionnaire, on health, for Lily Sperry's wonderful newsletter Health Gossip. Read it here, and subscribe to the newsletter here.
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