You Are In An Abusive Relationship With The Internet
The Internet is bad, everyone knows it, and we’re just going to keep doing it to ourselves.
“Sharing,” once purportedly the ultimate thing to do online, has become unwise now that we have the whole internet to wield against one another. The safest tack is to serve as little personal information, or as few identifying details to public platforms as possible.… Somehow things have reversed, and now the internet is a place for your buttoned-up self, with the untidy entrails of your real life shoved under the bed, lurking outside the edges of your normal-looking Instagrams. The internet has transformed from a place you could safely hide certain feelings and appetites into a place where you can get in trouble for them.
No one needs to be sold on how bad the Internet is now, and “Why this was the year the Internet became the worst” is a genre that will never lack for content so long as we have an Internet to put it on. (“Remember when the Internet used to be good” has already established itself as the same reliable provider of ways to express just how terrible things are these days.) That said, Leigh Alexander’s crack at explaining why even thinking about being online makes us want to die is worth your time if you need a reminder that you are not alone in so feeling.