Kate Wagner’s 404 Page Not Found is something I resonate with. My brother and cousins were born around the same time as Kate and I remember watching over their shoulders as they navigated different websites and created their MySpace pages. I do not remember a time when I used webrings, but it reminds me of the game called Wikiracing in which we start on one Wikipedia page and only use internal links to end up at a different set Wikipedia page or topic. It is wild to think how fast the internet has changed, evolved, grown, and regressed. I, too, miss the old internet.
I miss playing games on the web like Pixie Hallow, Fantage, and Club Penguin. I don’t actually know why those games stopped, but I have a feeling it was because they weren’t making enough money to continue them. It would be lovely if the web could just have space for these things to exist without the idea of profit in mind. Just like if MySpace could still exist with the ability to customize freely. Truly, “capitalism will obliterate everything you know and love.” It has been this way for every aspect of life and after reading this article, it is so clear it happened with the old internet too. Nowadays, there are so many advertisements on whichever app we use. Even in blogs which used to be made to keep friends and family updated are now incentivized. Everything has always come back to if it is profitable or not. To make an analogy, I feel like what my family and society seek is like Facebook while MySpace is what I strive for. In a culture where I was always told to pursue maths and sciences in my studies in the hope of a “more successful” career, I feel like attending Columbia is my act of rebellion toward that. Attending art school and dipping my toes into the realm of graphic design is my way of exploring my inner child and creativity that was oh so shoved down throughout grade school. Without having the idea of a career or profit in mind, it eases the pressure for me and has given me so much more space to just play and create for the sake of playing and creating. In the same way, MySpace, which “flashed out of existence in the blink of a gif,” was just for fun, to connect, decorate, express, and customize in whichever way you’d like. Facebook, on the other hand, stayed on the web since it was for profit, but it is not fun or funky. We need the energy of MySpace again, to just create to create.
As for this current internet, I hope to continue to use the internet and social media to actually connect with my friends. “The internet has always been deeply and irrevocably personal,” Kate says. The internet was intended for connection and to share information in a fun way. The apps we use don’t care for that. I really love making my social media pages very personal. There are some times when I’m not sure how personal to make it, but then I remember the people I am in connection with are genuine and the things I share on there are things I’d also share with them in person. I also love using it as a way to visually capture moments in my life and look back on where I was in each season of my life. I like my digital footprint and I’m not too worried about mine since digital media is impermanent anyway it seems.