I miss how things were before
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I miss the early 2010s internet where it was basically a free-for-all, before all the ads and censoring. I miss my friends being like: "did you see that video of the guy putting a jar up his ass?" I miss dumb shit like filthyfrank. I miss the Idubbz content cop. I miss when being online wasn't such a fucking a drag. Now it feels like you have to avoid saying about many things to avoid being censored and people are aiming for virality and not just doing things for the hell of it.
And dont get me wrong the early 2010s was pretty fucked up. At least the country where I am from mental health and being gay was still heavily stigmatized. I used Tumblr heavily during that time and all I followed was self harm and eating disorder bullshit. My mental health was so fucked during that time. So i ain't advocating for all parts of that period at all. But right now, everything feels so censored and constrained. I work in a school and I feel like I can see the teenagers I work with suffocating under it all and having worse self esteem than when I did following the fucking self harm pages.
I dont know. I see the kids im working with and I worry about the future. In a decade from when I was a teen the internet went from being unfiltered and pure chaos to heavily censored and idealized.
At least when it was fucked up and traumatizing it was still real.