[thur; 12.10] digital footprint

Justin Bieber, Save The Dolphins!!!

Welcome to this Thursday’s issue of my now continuing morning coffee series, a short form newsletter to land in your inbox every day this week. If you missed introductions, or would like to know how to opt out of daily e-mails like this, check out the updated housekeeping post . Though I think that instead of opting out, you should stay.

If you think about it, conceptually, the internet hasn’t really ever changed. At one point we were given access to everything, everywhere, all at once, and that’s how it’s been ever since. It’s just back then there was less of anything, anywhere, at any given point in time.

The collective mind of humanity really ran away with it though, content-wise. We’ve all been through a lot (hold me). From wondering what the hell do foxes say, to QAnon, to realising that a large proportion of men are out here thinking about the Roman Empire, unprompted, regularly. “No more than any other person,” the guy says in that one TikTok. “One or two times a week.” Bury me at sea, I’m dead.

I’ve been online more or less consistently and without proper parental supervision since I was 12. And, in retrospect, I really feel like someone should have confirmed my full sentience before ever letting me touch a keyboard.

Do you have any idea how embarrassing that is? Do you know what it’s like to google your full government name and the first page of google results to reveal that at 13 years of age you signed a petition called “Justin Bieber Save The Dolphins!”?! 13 is NOT that young! Lord help me, I’m the only one of my name in the whole wide world, there’s nowhere to hide.

Nowadays, my terminally online version of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire is a choleric mental rehashing of the Rise and Fall of Twitter. One day we have flip phones, the next we’re betting on how many ego-maniacs it takes to fuck up changing the lightbulb so comprehensively that it burns the whole damn house down. Not even 20 years into The Internet and all I’m seeing is entirely too much Nero, and not at all enough Vespasian.

While filling up my house with the enthusiasm of a liberal millennial in a thrift store, I’m inching steadily towards a more minimalist online presence. How much less overwhelming would life be, if all I had was this Substack? But lord help me, I would miss the people. Yes, the screen can be distracting, but everyone here is just another real person, after all.

Terrifying, right? Also, super cool. Hello, fellow humans! I wonder how long we have before every chatbot can ace the Turing test and I can no longer tell which of you are real people. Fun thought. Fun in a get-me-the-hell-out-of-here kinda way, but… If AI can pass for humans, let’s try to be even more human than we already are. Quick, do a cartwheel or something.

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Good morning! What embarrassing stuff did you get up to in your early online days? Don’t worry, this is a safe space. And by safe space I mean we *will* feel safe to laugh at you.

Here’s a song. (Some of the most real person stuff I’ve ever heard, still.)