In the late 90s, I joined an exchange program where I learnt HTML and web pages. That’s when I began using IRC and ICQ to connect with people in other countries. The internet was still very young, and within the next few years, AOL, Yahoo, and MSN each launched their own messengers one after the other.
In the following decade, the internet was something I used only on desktop, while the phone was mainly for texts and calls.
Eventually, I bought a phone that could connect to the internet with data. Mobile, data-driven messenger apps really exploded around that time, from 2008 into the mid-2010s—WhatsApp and Facebook leading the charge.
‘Always on’ became commonplace, and now, 15 years deep, privacy as ‘always off’ is the new normal.
Anything publicly visible becomes the property of the internet at large. Gone are the days when corners of the web were untouched by internet crawlers and archives. There seems to be no longer such a thing as ‘private’. One way or the other, once you’re ‘connected’ someone beside yourself is in your ‘room’ – either taking from it, or sending algorithmic packages to your front door.
I’ve gotten quite weary of this loss. It feels like I’ve lost more than I’ve gained.
Granting use of work, or anything really, on the internet, becomes co-ownership, and once it’s public, the co-owners then become the public themselves.
We are losing our narratives and instead they are being replaced with AI-driven guesses about who we are. If we are ‘popular’ enough, random people on the interwebs do that guessing instead…filling in the gaps between our public and personal lives.
Owning my name, my narrative, and my work comes with a price – and one I am more open to paying. I think I’d just rather be anonymous, because even then I’m not guaranteed to be anonymous.. People walk around with their phones snapping away at everything, and you become a collateral human – an unpaid extra.
In the world we live in, it might be the only decision I have left, once connected, to make. To not share others irresponsibly, and to only share myself in ways that I can trust the responsibleness of those I share with.
What have we left ? What have we at all ?
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