A Tribute to My Internet, Or, Reality As a Tumour

The Internet has atrophied as I’ve grown inside of it.

Zillenial is the closest I can get to any affirmation of my experience of generation, and it’s such a corny nomer. I remember The Nanny and All That, but only the reruns. I still watched music videos on MTV all morning on the weekends, but Blockbuster was on its way out. By the grace of some god, I missed dial-up internet access, and arrived just in time for Limewire to completely fuck my family’s computer. I remember a time before everyone’s Instagram became a business card and the line between digital and physical worlds completely dissipated into one Fascist blob of hyper-existence and surveillance. I was about nine. I am indebted to my child gnosis. It propelled me to start writing precisely at that age, with a pen and paper, before things got so cluttered.

My sister and I holding our new MP3 players <3

My third-grade teacher assigned a poetry project for St. Patrick’s Day. I guess because of the association between Irish people and rhymes? Not sure, but I brightly remember the white, prison-inspired walls of the hallway opening up toward the light of Mrs. Schaeffer’s¹ room. I remember how the almost-Spring sun glinted against the playground pegged in red clay sharply environed by the large window of her classroom, distracting me from her and my mothers’ post-Parent-Teacher Conference chit-chat. Mrs. Schaeffer paused, glanced down at me studiedly, and then looked at my mother. I could feel the intensity of the eye contact from two feet below them. In her way of speaking, sweet and thick, like Georgians do, she informed my mother that I have a “very unique voice” and that my writing practice should be fostered. I wouldn’t say my mother did that, because she had other things to worry about (I mean, it was 2008). Regardless of my mother’s in/action, this memory is something my body has held onto for the span of my life. It propels every word that I write; right now and forever. As it happens, validation from those Above You is not easy for a Black girl in the Bible Belt to come by, so we must savor the rations throughout our existence. Any and every affirmation is treasure among dogshit.

The next year, I discovered MySpace after my friend, Aurelie*, with whom I shared the horror of “developing early”, asked me if I had one. I spent hours in the Computer Room at home with another, more harmless browser window (likely a Flash game) open in case of parental intrusion. I made my first email (bjazzzeee@yahoo.com forever) and signed up for the site, looking through page themes, adding my favorite music, and making my first posts. My first tiny pieces, where I expressed myself to No One. Some of my friends were present, of course, because that’s how social media works, but I was far more intrigued by this sexy, endless, formless ether I had begun interacting with.

Above You did not exist on The Internet. I found myself no longer bound by the taught leashes of human societal expectation. I had defeated whatever demon possessed people to think I wasn’t worth paying attention to, and all I had to do was hide my face. The Internet was always there, waiting to witness me, expectant of what piece of myself I’d bring that day. This was where I could decide who I was, how I wanted to be interacted with, and what information about myself I wanted projected into the void. I am of the last generation that knew an internet that existed as an ocean, and the generative thing that it was.