on aging out of the internet

watching the year--and my brain--spin to its conclusion

The internet is not an easy place to be. But recently, I’ve been thinking about where I “belong” online. Anytime I’m trying to find belonging brings anxiety—am I doing this wrong? Shouldn’t I be getting more engagement here? Am I trying too hard? As I mentioned last week, I often find myself just a tad *too* online for my own good, and yet I don’t always feel that the social media I “grew up” with, like Twitter, are the right place for me or my voice.

I cannot always keep up the perpetual social media colossus. I’m far too anxious to be off the cuff on Twitter, and far too self-conscious for more visual platforms like Instagram. I’m not snappy and quippy and edgy enough to be interesting online, period. Do I belong on the internet? And if I do—where?

am i tickled by the “me as a baby” meme? yes. do i understand this without looking it up on Know Your Meme? absolutely not.

Turns out my recent insecurity was given a name this year. Anytime new language is assigned to a nagging feeling, it’s so validating. So when I learned about the “millennial pause,” the contours of this sensation I was having online became visible, thanks to writer Kate Lindsay:

“Once my eyes were opened to the Millennial pause, I started noticing my age in every part of my internet experience. I get confused whenever Instagram changes its layout. I use GIFs to make jokes in Slack. I have posted song lyrics on my Instagram Story. The range of mannerisms is so broad, the signs such a staple of my online behavior for the past 15 years, that it’s not even worth trying to fight them.”

- Kate Lindsay, “Are You Sure You’re Not Guilty of the ‘Millennial Pause’?” The Atlantic

In case you don’t read the full Atlantic article above: the idea here is that millennials feel somewhat alienated on social media, and also visible in awkward ways, because it’s no longer geared towards them. We have reflexive habits like this “pause” that are so engrained from adjusting to years of evolving technology.

In other words: we’re not young’uns anymore. So no wonder I feel weird trying to make a TikTok, and so many of my friends love TikTok yet have little to no interest in uploading videos themselves.

It would be easy (and really fucking fun) to blame this, to some degree, on Elon Musk and SBF and other tech-alomaniacs ruining the internet for us all. But that’s not honest. The internet has, until recently, felt like a place where even when I feared what might happen or felt unsure, I had an instinctual notion of how to be. I’m not sure I feel that way anymore.