I think the modem era of internet connectivity was a masterclass in patience.
It was a time when access was more of a ritual. As long as it takes to wait for the connectivity to negotiate its handshake, there was a strange sanctity to it. Because you had to intend to be online and commit to the noise, tied-up phone line, and obviously, the waiting.
I've only experienced the tail end of this, around the early 2000s when I'd anxiously wait for the static screech and robotic buzz so that I could play this puzzle-like game.
I don't remember the name anymore, just the visuals. Huge blocks shifting with bright colors merging on a low-resolution screen from a high-resolution world.
It was a destination I traveled to, not a layer of reality that followed me around.
And then a couple of months later, the switch flipped. Or rather, it was unplugged.
Of course, I didn't remember much of the divorce from the internet the moment of the switch right until the mid-2010s.
It wasn't a conscious boycott. Life just happened and a series of events created a gap between me and any form of access to the internet.
Part of me wonders what my life would've been like if I remained plugged in all through that digital explosion.
That specific span of time, roughly 2005 to 2015, I'd say was the terraforming era of the modern mind.
Happily forgotten
While I was away, the world moved from desktop to mobile and curiosity-driven searches to algorithmic suggestions.
I missed the birth of social media as a second skin of sorts and was simply existing in the analog silence without the pressure to perform for an audience that never sleeps, so to speak.
Coming back online in the mid-2010s felt a bit like walking into a party that had been going on for ten years and everyone had inside jokes, dialects, anxieties I didn't quite understand at first.
The disconnect was jarring but not unwelcomed, in the sense that, I recognized the internet, but I didn't recognize what people had become on it and what it had become to them.
Whatever it may be, it's a lost decade, a good one too, I presume. Because in that silence, something else happened.
As not only did I touch some, I mean, a lot of grass, both literally and metaphorically, I built a foundation that wasn't made within the glow of a screen or validated by strangers I'd never meet.
I feel nowadays, particularly of present teenagers and children coming of age, having a life outside of their devices is almost impossible.
There is a bit of a distinct difference between growing up on the internet and growing up alongside it.
The former shapes you in its image, maybe, subconsciously, via algorithms filling in the gaps of identity before you've had a chance to discover them yourself.
For example, when trends that resonate with your half-formed sense of self catch on, it's much easier to adopt them and mistake belonging for becoming, than let the messy, slower work of actual self-discovery happen on its own terms.
The latter, as in growing alongside the internet, kind of like parallel lines that somehow eventually meet, lets you remain adjacent, close enough to understand but at least far enough to remember what it feels like to exist without it.
I'm grateful I got the latter, even if it was seemingly by accident.
A decade later since coming back, I still have this impression of having never arrived or settled down in this reality of constant connection, as if some part of me is still standing at the threshold, try to not let of of the feeling of what it was like when the internet was a place you visited and not the air you breathed, so to speak.
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