In college, I had a housemate that was a gamer. He played in Halo tournaments for money. He had a cabal of mysterious Xbox people that he would play Rainbow Six with for countless hours. These voices in a headset were people he had "known" for several years. He knew their real names. He knew where they lived. They knew where he we lived.
I thought it was strange.
One day, he told me he would be going to Virginia for the weekend—a 12 hour round trip drive.
It Me: "What for?"
It Him: "Visiting some friends."
It Me: "Sweet, our other housemate is gone this weekend, as well, which means I'm gonna be very naked up in this bitch. That's cool you've kept in touch with your high school friends."
It Him: "Oh, they aren't high school friends. They are online friends."
It Me: "That's neat."
That was a lie. I did not think it was neat. I wanted to ask him for the "address" of the "house" that his "friend" "lived" where he would inevitably get kidnapped and murdered.
I thought it was fucking weird.
It's ordinary for people to meet online now. Online dating is the norm. Digital connects us in every way. But this was 2007. What he was doing was insane and extremely sus.
Flash forward eight years and I have a cabal of mysterious online people that I spend countless hours with on Twitter Dot Com. I now see how ahead of his time my housemate was.
The majority of my life has been intertwined with the Internet. I had my own computer in my room in fifth grade (1995) where I was able to privately browse naked pictures of Pamela Anderson. I've been oucheah. However, I've never had my identity defined by it. I never got invested into forums. I never played MMO's. I never created a "second life" on the web. It was a thing I enjoyed, not a thing I needed. That changed when I accepted a new job and moved to a new city two years ago. I had no family there and exactly one meaningful friendship, the exact opposite of what I had previously.
Oh, hell yeah. I'm in the same city with my best friend. We are going to hang out all the time. It'll be just like old times in college.
This wasn't even remotely close to coming true.
Like myself, he had taken a new job where he was having to work long hours. I had a child. At the time, he and his wife didn't, which complicated things as our schedules and free time were more at odds than Lil Wayne and Birdman.
I lived in the new city Monday through Thursday and returned home to my wife and daughter Friday through Sunday. While we attempted to sell our house, I lived with my friend and his wife for a month, then a hotel for a week, then subletted a room from a guy who never cleaned his two cats' litter box. I was isolated socially and turned to the Internet to assuage my despondency. I didn't crave attention necessarily. I craved interaction. I was already putting in overtime in my cubicle and, frankly, didn't want to go back to the cat poop house, so I'd stay at the office until 2am. I began churning out that Good Content™ as a way to not go crazy and entertain myself. The Internet was my best friend.
Even though we retreat to a digital realm (and may even prefer it), our ultimate goal shouldn't be to remain there.
I became obsessed. Favorites and retweets became a drug. I spent most of my time thinking of what my next gag would be. I neglected my job to mindlessly scroll my timeline and constantly refresh my notifications tab looking for my next high. Each new follower was a new dealer. Doing these micro-performances helped me temporarily feel less alone. I didn't know any of the people who gave me feedback on these idiotic blurbs, but if they appreciated the humor then I knew they were at least similar to me.
I doubled my followers and all I had to do was commit my entire life to wading through the toxic sludge pool that is Twitter and alienate my family. Ayyyy lmao. I was so loved and validated. Eventually, I landed an opportunity with Complex where I traveled to NYC and got to meet, work and turn up with a significant amount of the people I had only communicated with via keystrokes. It was revelatory. Thinkpieces were written about it. These strangers got me. I had a better rapport with people I knew for only a few days/weeks/months than friends I had known for years. These IRL interactions revitalized me and their effects had a much longer half-life than a retweet.
I realized how misguided my focus had been. I had used the Internet to escape when I should have used the Internet to help me escape the Internet. I was delusional because none of what I had been doing for months prior translated to anything transformative offline. If my phone battery died, I was still lonely. If my Internet went out, it was just me, an air mattress and cat turds. It did nothing to fix my sadness. It was a distraction like reading a Highlights magazine and being so engrossed in finding all the Hidden Pictures that I forgot I was about to get a root canal.
Even though we retreat to a digital realm (and may even prefer it), our ultimate goal shouldn't be to remain there. Whether we know it or not, we want and need IRL personal connections. Talking to someone on The Web™ is cool, but it's a placeholder for a better experience you could have with them if you were in the same room. Every time I've built with fam in person the end result has been exponentially more rewarding. Plus, there are 100% more opportunities to pop a 'gram and do numbers. Also, sometimes, these people have drugs that they will share with you.
The Internet allows us to remove the unfortunate default constraint of "geography" that controls so much about our lives. Where you grow up arbitrarily assigns your accent, food preferences and friends, some of which you don't really even like. How absurd is that? Your pool of friends—the people that will ultimately influence and shape you—is determined by the fact that some people got horny and fucked in the same general area and at the same time your parents got horny and fucked.
Years later, my housemate revealed to me that he was gay, something we all suspected. The only other people who knew were his online friends and they had known for a long time before anyone else. He fanuted digital connections to IRL connections and was able to find an escape, to be around people who knew the real him.
Listen, I love the Internet. It is one of the best things to happen to me (because all of the titties that are on it). Without it, how would I ever get paid to write glorified diary entries such as this one? Shit's brazy, my lords. As I've gotten less depressed and actively make efforts to spend more of my time with people in the flesh than through an app, my online usage has dwindled. I'm finding solace IRL and actively pray for the day I no longer have the urge to check Twitter once an hour. Then again, my next best friend might be out there somewhere in my mentions. I'd hate to miss them.
It me Justin Roberson. Follow me on Twitter here.
