scrollform

carmi

admittedly ive had a lot of social fails online

carmi Today at 5:08 PM
hi im carmi. i run spicyyeti.com and make webcomics

svvord Today at 5:09 PM
about since when have you been on the internet?
either your first overall experiences or really getting Online.

carmi Today at 5:11 PM
sgaljsalgjsd well one of my first internet memories was being shown the veggie tales bellybutton song on youtube in 2006. but i really got On the internet in 2008 when i stole my moms new laptop

svvord Today at 5:12 PM
LMAO i feel like there's so much skirting of parents with being on the internet as a kid, I always had to get on the computer when my dad was busy with other stuff

carmi Today at 5:12 PM
AGHASGJ THATS KINDA TRUE for the first few years i was online my computer was in the same room as my moms but it was facing away from hers so AGASDK I JUST ALWAYS MADE SURE TO HAVE MY VOLUME DOWN

svvord Today at 5:13 PM
you didn't have headphones?
actually nvm i remember not having headphones either

carmi Today at 5:13 PM
I THINK I FIRST GOT HEADPHONES IN 2012 AHGDSK

svvord Today at 5:14 PM
HONESTLY similar, i feel like now ive always used headphones (i dont even own speakers for my computer) but we really just had audio playing for the whole room didn't we
or on the lowest volume and holding the speaker to my ear
Being on the internet itself since 2008, when would you say you started being really social online?

carmi Today at 5:17 PM
i got online in late 2008 and by 2009 i had started using this website called scratch.mit.edu
i found it because i wanted to find the original club penguin "penguin chat" demo or whatever the hell it was called
and someone had recreated it in scratch
so i guess i technically mustve been using club penguin before i got on scratch AFKL;AS IDK
but yeah both of those sites were extremely social for me

svvord Today at 5:18 PM
i think i get the gist of club penguin, but what was scratch.mit.edu like?

carmi Today at 5:19 PM
so scratch is a site developed by MIT used to teach kids how to program
i think for the most part kids are introduced to it in school but i happened to find it on my own
back then you would make an account, download the program, and make and upload projects in it
your and others peoples projects were viewable in-browser (and nowadays the program itself is in-browser too)
kids pretty much had free reign to comment on each others projects, interact in the forums, even organize meetups and share their skypes and such AHKGHSAKGJ IT WAS HONESTLY KINDA CHAOTIC EVEN WITH ADULT MODERATORS TRYING TO KEEP THE PEACE
IN MY FIRST PROJECT I ASKED FOR PEOPLES ADDRESSES

svvord Today at 5:21 PM
LMAOO
that is so interesting, ive honestly never heard of that!

carmi Today at 5:22 PM
IT WAS A REALLY INTERESTING SITE TO GROW UP ON
another funny feature scratch has is "remixing" peoples projects
ideally youre supposed to do it like forking in github jsdfjsda like using it to improve on someones code i think
BUT NOBODY ACTUALLY KNEW HOW THE HELL TO CODE AT ALL AND 99% OF THE TIME IT WAS USED TO BLATANTLY STEAL AND RECOLOR PEOPLES PROJECTS HASDGASKG svvord Today at 5:23 PM
getting kids into copyright theft early on

carmi Today at 5:23 PM
LITERALLY we'd just put copyrighted music in our projects and write "credit to whoever made this"
WE REALLY WROTE THAT

svvord Today at 5:23 PM
NICE
were your profiles basically your real names/selves?

carmi Today at 5:25 PM
not at all agsjgks to this day im a little shocked that its normal to use your real name on twitter
everyone went by a username
everyone had an avatar (usually an anthro)

carmi Today at 5:25 PM
mine was a cat

svvord Today at 5:25 PM
did they have anthros to choose from or did you just upload your own picture?

carmi Today at 5:26 PM
they did not have anthros to choose from. the starting assets from scratch were all these really ugly characters or straight up cutout photographs of real kids GDASKJGASKJGSADJKSAGJK SO YEAH it was expected you would design your own anthro
socially though there were like
A FEW MAIN SPECIES TO CHOOSE FROM
there were the cats, mostly kids who were warriors fans
there were hamsters and idk where they got that idea but yeah there were hamsters
and there were tokis? takis?? they were lizard creatures designed by a notable scratcher

svvord Today at 5:28 PM
were there more social threads or was it strictly project based?

carmi Today at 5:32 PM
there were forums i didnt know how to work as a kid ghjhkjsg one of the people on the godhead music team actually frequented the scratch forums as a kid and theyre still a part of a social group that came out of that fdlsaflk im also still a part of my social group that came out of the projects. its funny to me these unique social strains came out of the same website and same time period
we were coexisting and Didnt Even Know

svvord Today at 5:33 PM
small internet...
were there any other social-ish sites you used/currently use?

carmi Today at 5:35 PM
after scratch i got on deviantart and id say thats where i spent the bulk of my time on the internet somehow?? fks;lfksl;a i rarely socialized with anyone who werent my friends from scratch cuz deviantart is full of weird fetish people but it was a good site to develop as an artist
oh wait i did use tumblr in its heyday
i was not active on tumblr i joined to look at homestuck fanart
and similarly i joined twitter in 2019 to look at homestuck fanart svvord Today at 5:36 PM
it do be like that
were you mostly social offline then?

carmi Today at 5:38 PM
not really AHGASHJGKSA ive always been kind of a shutin. after i formed a solid group of friends on scratch i just stuck with them until PRETTY MUCH LAST YEAR
theyre still my friends, what i mean is i didnt branch out socially much until recently
though of course i had school friends

svvord Today at 5:39 PM
would you say your friends from scratch were similar to the friends you made at school?

carmi Today at 5:40 PM
not really? the friends you meet online youre able to filter out more whereas the ones you meet at school sometimes youre stuck with circumstantially DSAHGUGHUDHKASGHJASK
i found it easier to bond with specific people online
at school i didnt form many close bonds, i just kinda tried to keep a good reputation and not much else

svvord Today at 5:41 PM
that's very fair! it can be stressful, especially with school having more professional consequences.

carmi Today at 5:41 PM
the older you get yeah

svvord Today at 5:42 PM
and you've kept a pretty consistent online "brand"/persona over the years, right?

carmi Today at 5:43 PM
id say so. i think the ways i interact online can be categorized in either the carmi persona or the spicyyeti persona
spicyyeti came in 2015

svvord Today at 5:45 PM
how would you differentiate those two personas?

carmi Today at 5:46 PM
the carmi one is like a concentrated version of my personality...its like what i use to talk to people online openly and freely
the spicyyeti one is more something i use to advertise my work? i find it comically aggressive and i wouldnt use it to actually talk TO anyone. its more just an announcer voice, a way to present read-only information
since spicyyeti for me is a site that represents me in a way that people can only look at, not interact with.

svvord Today at 5:50 PM
spicyyeti is your personal work site, correct?

carmi Today at 5:50 PM
yup

svvord Today at 5:51 PM
what kind of things do you post on spicyyeti?

carmi Today at 5:52 PM
PRETTY MUCH WHATEVER I WANT....................the four main links are "home", "art", "stories", and "about"
but there are a ton of hidden links that lead to a bunch of random bullshit as well

svvord Today at 5:55 PM
Do you find any way that the internet or the sites you use don't host yourself in a way you wish they could?

carmi Today at 5:56 PM
like do i wish i could represent myself as clearly on other sites as i do on spicyyeti??

svvord Today at 5:58 PM
when presenting yourself in either the carmi or spicyyeti role, do the different sites/programs you use for each one fail in some way, or do you wish that they had some additional/different functionality to present yourself exactly as you'd intend?

carmi Today at 6:02 PM
oh ok well i guess i dont have much constructive criticism for other sites since i can just go to my own and do what i want dshagjkg like i accept that presenting myself in an isolated environment such as my own site is going to afford me more freedom than socializing with others through ANY interface, whether online or irl
admittedly ive had a lot of social fails online but as janky as any of the social media platforms we have to choose from are i dont really blame the platform when that happens
i think socializing is just a mess no matter where you go AGASGHKJSAGDSA

svvord Today at 6:05 PM
but yeah, i feel that
do you find yourself preferring your own web space over traditional social media?

carmi Today at 6:08 PM
i used to but now i feel its optimal to have both
as much as i do spicyyeti for myself i wouldnt publish it if i didnt want others to see it dsafhs im glad people on twitter have shown interest
im also glad i can actually talk to people on twitter and watch their shenanigans as well ;safksf;lsa

rads

if you're gay it's not like anybody can do anything about it

rads Today at 8:26 PM
Heya! I'm rads and i'm a digital artist and kind - of - writer.

svvord Today at 8:26 PM
we love artists here
about since when have you been on the internet?

rads Today at 8:30 PM
I want to say 2007-2008 but i have a feeling it may be even earlier than that, i learned how to read when i was really young so id be fussing around mspaint for hours on end while looking at pictures of my favorite cartoon characters lol

svvord Today at 8:31 PM
that's the life tbh, i want to go back.

rads Today at 8:34 PM
A simpler time in the internet

svvord Today at 8:35 PM
what were your first social experiences on the internet like?

rads Today at 8:38 PM
Dressup dolls game hubs with little forums (i didnt participate in those so much as peek over the topics), Neopets, and pokemon fansites were pretty much my roaming range, i even had an unused MSN account that only ever got to share messages with my mom
This was still on the period where adults would warn you about strangers online so even when i started to peek at flash files on newgrounds i struggled to engage, and mostly lurked on creator and user pages up until i was like... 9? I think
svvord Today at 8:41 PM
what changed for you then?
or maybe changed about the internet?

rads Today at 8:45 PM
It was a mix between my family moving around for the second time since i was born and me losing contact with my old schoolfriends, and social games like Habbo Hotel and less known variants cropping up all over the place
They looked really shiny. For someone on the cusp of being 10 years old it was like oh yeah, this is neopet for teens

svvord Today at 8:46 PM
The Cooler Neopets

rads Today at 8:46 PM
"In this one you can have pool parties!"

svvord Today at 8:46 PM
oh wow
did you talk to other kids there more?

rads Today at 8:48 PM
I suspect so yeah i think a lot of us were playing an extended roleplay game of pretending to be older than we really were
Most claiming to be fifteen years old at the time would then happily engage with you for hours on erudite topics like, ben 10, so youd rarely get discovered

svvord Today at 8:50 PM
all that googling cartoon characters really starting to pay off i bet

rads Today at 8:50 PM
That was the tutorial stage i had to beat to join society
Very important

svvord Today at 8:51 PM
how would you say your social interactions have grown online?

rads Today at 9:00 PM
I think learning to speak english opened up a whole half of the web that wasn't disponible to me before, even when it was still rusty and id have to google translate file names before downloading videogame roms. Casual stuff like social games would get boring quick or become repetitive (besides walking around and paying to own pretty things, there wasnt much content to the minigames) and searching for anything related to media i enjoyed would deposit me on english speaking websites if i wanted to see new things
I went from barely logging into Orkut (i think this social media died off by now? It was a brazillian alternative to facebook when that was still in its infancy) to look at family pictures to spending HOURS looking through any and all fandom related sites and fanblogs i could find

svvord Today at 9:03 PM
was a lot of the media you were interested in primarily based in english?

rads Today at 9:06 PM
Yeah! Brazillian entertainment is very ... adult oriented? even when we're talking about national shows for kids the pull ends up being telenovela-style drama between the teachers or parent figures
To make up for that most channels imported their cartoons, preteen series and animes to be dubbed and shown in matinee programs or afternoon blocks for kids
Here you either study in the morning or in the afternoon, so the matinees were for kids who woke up at 11 to get ready for school while the afternoon blocks were for the kids who studied in the morning and spent the rest of the day dicking around in the house
The end result was that most stuff i got into had its news written up in a totally different language, but when the reruns refuse to show you new season episodes you have to get a little creative

svvord Today at 9:12 PM
that's really interesting that more of the entertainment was towards adults
do you think your early language barrier effect how you interacted with/presented yourself to others in the english online spaces?

rads Today at 9:16 PM
It definitely did
I'd try to make my digital footprint smaller, if that makes sense? I still couldn't understand a good 60% of the complex language being utilized and it was just made worse by all sorts of internetspeak and abbreviations that depended on cultural knowledge
I got the habit of lurking around and absorbing as much information as i could but only inserting myself into conversations to give brief feedback in the form of compliments
It was a little easier to bullshit spanish so id halve my time looking for links and threads and news in latin fanclubs and watch how they bullshitted english in turn

svvord Today at 9:23 PM
you speak Portuguese, right?

rads Today at 9:24 PM
Yep! Brazillian portuguese, it's different from the one they speak in europe

svvord Today at 9:27 PM
Were there a lot of spaces online that used it? Or what were those spaces like (other than Orkut I guess).

rads Today at 9:30 PM
Early 2010's brazillian internet feels very empty to me, partly because not a lot of people saw a "use" for it. Phones were huge, we love phones, but pre-facebook you'd struggle to find a computer in most modest households. It was an expensive and clunky thing to own that didn't come with localized instructions
Even printing stuff was reserved to "Xerox places" and a lot of people made money on mounting like 10 pcs on their garage and charging 1 real per hour of use
So you'd see a lot of websites for brands and newspapers but social stuff wasn't popularized or accessible, at least not in the way i see people talk about livejournal or myspace as part of their teen years
I got my first phone when i was 10 years old and at that point (2011~ onwards) is when the novelty of social media started to become a real hot topic, and i even found brazillian focused fanfic sites eventually - but as far as fanfics go, those are also often adult leaning

svvord Today at 9:38 PM
how would you say that's transformed to how you use the internet today?

rads Today at 9:41 PM
I think it taught me to read and research a lot, to the point that's still how i spend most of my time online
Fansites and fanclubs introduced me to community based fanart so i finally had an excuse to draw things with intent and for a public, which i still do to this day, and it's the stuff I'm primarily known for
Though now that im secure enough to hold a conversation ive moved from an expectator to an active actor who can directly interact with the things i enjoy and their creators

svvord Today at 9:47 PM
do you try to present yourself a particular way to other creators or communities online?

rads Today at 9:52 PM
Yeah! I'm a lot more polished than i am in real life, and i guess more aproachable? I like having the option to communicate thru text to express things more clearly

svvord Today at 9:53 PM
I definitely relate to that lol
Do you find large differences between the people you interact with online verses offline?

rads Today at 9:59 PM
IRL most of my contacts can be summed up with school related classmates or family, and i end up losing contact with people when/if i move places because a lot of the appeal in those acquaintances is being able to hang out instead of shared interests
On the flipside theres a few people online ive known for years and whom ive seen grow from place to place, most of which are artists themselves or into some sort of creative hobby. By and large, they're often part of the lgbt community one way or another too svvord Today at 10:05 PM
How would you say being a part of the LGBT community effected the difference between your online and offline identities?

rads Today at 10:10 PM
It helped a lot to have somewhere to discuss these sort of personal and touchy topics that wasn't out in the open, i think i got very lucky choosing the communities i visited and was able to catch the development of a lot of hubs focused on exploring gay characters and non-cishet identities. If it wasn't for that, i doubt id even be the same person i am today, online and offline. I still havent found anything quite like that in real life, if you aren't from big cities or capitals the gay part of the population is like... hiding under rocks. Out of necessity more than anything
The "Everyone is a stranger" warning ends up working in your favour once you realize in the internet, nobody knows who you are, so if you claim to be a boy you're a boy, and if you're gay it's not like anybody can do anything about it

svvord Today at 10:20 PM
It is nice, to not have to convince people of things like that.
It's a relief!

svvord Today at 10:22 PM
Was there anything else you wanted to talk about?

rads Today at 10:25 PM
Not much tbh... i guess just that if the pandemic months have proven anything is how much digital support and socialization can go a long way to make sure you don't go stir crazy LOL

svvord Today at 10:26 PM
AH yeah. It's a ride seeing "irl" people adapt to online socialization more.

rads Today at 10:29 PM
Hopefully this settles the age old dispute on whether or not internet friends count as "real" friendship, i think that one is way past its expiration date

julia

Posting is the little death.
That's all.

julia Today at 8:08 PM
I'm julia and I make words happen on the computer with my mind.

svvord Today at 8:09 PM
About since when have you been on the internet?

julia Today at 8:10 PM
I suppose that depends on what you mean by being on the internet, but my earliest memories of it involve being about 11 or 12 years old, still on dial-up, playing Flash games (R.I.P.) on Newgrounds.

svvord Today at 8:11 PM
I guess when would you say you started to be online regularly?

julia Today at 8:12 PM
14 probably, 15 at oldest. At some point I upgraded off Newgrounds and moved on to what was then social media - Tumblr.

svvord Today at 8:12 PM
Ohoh
What was it like then?

julia Today at 8:12 PM
Man, what wasn't it like.
Lots of very strange teenagers, me included. I started out, of all things, as a Doctor Who roleplay blog. From that I moved on to just a regular oddball guy with an interest in My Little Pony, then Homestuck, and always video games.
A lot of people that were on Tumblr back then look back at it now as like, a blight on their lives, and indubitably it was an... unstable period for me, too. But I think that's leaving out the fact that Tumblr acted as a sort of support group for very mentally ill teenagers, even sometimes essential to survival. Which is, of course, also the reason why Tumblr in those years was essentially one long endless intracommunity war.

svvord Today at 8:17 PM
Teenage thunder dome slash support group

julia Today at 8:19 PM
Straight up! This is where we got like, that big wave of otherkin stuff, which is something you could write a novel-length essay on. It seems cringey and outright incomprehensible to outsiders, but it makes nothing short of perfect sense for teenagers of the trans and mentally ill variety to need that sort of anchor on their identity.
The craziest among us obviously had, uh, clashes of identity a lot. But more than anything else that's just what happens when you put a bunch of 15 year olds in the Internet Wiggler.

svvord Today at 8:23 PM
You could fast track almost any social experiment to the extreme by having your participants be teenagers
Did you have a friend-group on tumblr? Or a niche in your fandoms?

julia Today at 8:25 PM
I was HUGE into Homestuck, which is the fandom equivalent of pouring lysergic acid directly into your eyeballs.
Interestingly, though, I don't remember making many friends from that. It was almost a friend de-maker, what with this weird (and, to this day, persistent) Bright Poisonous Frog Colors vibe the Homestuck fandom gave off.
I must've gotten involved with my first real friend group when I was about 16 or 17, many of which I still talk to this day. We primarily bonded over video games and played said video games together.

svvord Today at 8:27 PM
Playing video games online?

julia Today at 8:28 PM
Yeah! I can't put my finger on which video game we first bonded over.

svvord Today at 8:28 PM
I feel that. Were the friends you made online different from the people you talked to offline?

julia Today at 8:29 PM
Yes. For starters, they knew I was trans.
Odd as it sounds, the gender situation was easy enough to verbalize like that. There were more things bringing us together, though, like an obvious neuroatypicality which would take us all much longer to come to terms with.
In retrospect, that last part seems almost inevitable. The internet has always attracted neurodivergent people from a younger age.

svvord Today at 8:33 PM
Being social can definitely seem a lot less daunting with such a strong physical barrier.
Do you think you presented yourself differently online? Whether by being openly trans or elsewise?

julia Today at 8:35 PM
I definitely presented a lot of my more intricate ideas exclusively online, seeing as I had no one to share them with in real life.
And of course there's the physical barrier angle - I've cycled through an infinity of icons and modes of presentation (a fursona is an interesting one, it's like, an entire facet of You that's Not Quite you), and only last year did I settle on just using a real picture of me as a profile picture on Twitter.
Online was almost a testing ground for my gender presentation, years before I endeavored to come out in real life.

svvord Today at 8:39 PM
How did you start by testing it out? I assume starting on tumblr?

julia Today at 8:41 PM
On Tumblr at first, little by little. It's funny, I went back and revisited an archive of my old blog some time ago - I was like 19 and just had "don't ask me about my gender" on there. No pronouns, no nothing.
From that I naturally stuck to she/her, went through like 3 names. That last part's a big divide between my real life presentation and my online one. I have friends online that have known me by a grand total of 4 different names, while my average real life acquaintance just knows my dead name (if that) and julia, which I'm quite confident i'll be keeping.

svvord Today at 8:43 PM
It's funny how online friends can be the first to learn things about you.
Did you use other social media sites, other than Tumblr?

julia Today at 8:46 PM
Not really ever at the same time. Facebook, almost out of social obligation to real life people - that's a funny one. Facebook was hardly anything other than an extension of the "mask" of my real life persona before I'd come out of the closet.
By the time I moved to Twitter, Tumblr was already dying. So never simultaneously, no.

svvord Today at 8:48 PM
Facebook definitely weirdly served a "keeping up appearances" niche as a social media.

julia Today at 8:49 PM
Before it became a hive for Christian uncles to post Minion memes.

svvord Today at 8:50 PM
MAN
Social media sites just gradually becoming parodies of themselves.

julia Today at 8:50 PM
Terrible. I give Twitter five years and then who knows. Maybe we'll all finally say fuck it and go back to the pseudo-anonymity of reddit.

svvord Today at 8:51 PM|
Reddit's already forcing accounts with icons and everything, in five years it'll be the new twitter with downvoting.

julia Today at 8:52 PM
FINALLY... the dislike button.

svvord Today at 8:52 PM
What was/is your experience on Reddit like?

julia Today at 8:53 PM
Posting nonsense in the comments section. Deleting that. Now I exclusively go on music subreddits to pick up on bangers and occasionally post some of my own.

svvord Today at 8:55 PM
Do you think you interacted with others differently, switching between tumblr and twitter?

julia Today at 8:56 PM
I was funnier on Tumblr.
Tumblr was a funnier website though.
The very layout of Tumblr was more receptive to, say, people collaborating on a joke, or switching up images and text for a real punchline delivery.

svvord Today at 8:58 PM
Twitter is a bit more straightforward in terms of where the post ends

julia Today at 9:00 PM
I also curate myself more on Twitter, at least as far as that means anything. It's not like I censor myself, and Twitter's at this weird spot right now where like, lots of places that employ writers think it's a bonus for you to have a lot of followers, and the way to get that is to be funny and/or weird, and the way to guarantee that is to be at least a little unprofessional.
I used to post straight up whatever came to mind on Tumblr though. Much more frenzied environment.
(Not that I have a ton of followers.)

svvord Today at 9:02 PM
Tumblr definitely always felt more wild, like even though you could personalize your account so much you were still way more anonymous.
I think the average amount of twitter followers is like 20 or something.

julia Today at 9:03 PM
Incredible. Had me 7k of those at some point on Tumblr. Twitter is so scarce in comparison, even though the userbase is so much bigger.
Feels like there's so much more... space, between users.

svvord Today at 9:05 PM
You knew everyone else on tumblr was in it for a crazy time and there are POLITICIANS on twitter

julia Today at 9:06 PM
Yeah no that's for sure restrictive. There's like, Important People here, and an understanding that this reflects your real life person in an even Facebook-like way. So you naturally feel the need to share less.
Good, to a point, because we were all oversharing so fucking bad on Tumblr.
But it's also so, so much harder to find a place on the internet where you can create yourself an identity like, from scrap.

svvord Today at 9:07 PM
Especially where people see who's following who and the numbers game

julia Today at 9:08 PM
Mhm! There's pressure to be a big name.

svvord Today at 9:09 PM
Do you feel any disconnects, either from switching to a more "real" social media or between your online and offline lives?

julia Today at 9:10 PM
Not nearly as much as I used to. I freely hand out my Twitter to people who ask for it now. If they wanna see me retweet fanart of the webcomic I'm working on, or post little tidbits of nonsense, by all means.
I've noticed that my speech patterns on- and off- line have homogenized too, as much as they can (it's always gonna be different talking with your Mouth than through a Keyboard.)

svvord Today at 9:11 PM
Living free

julia Today at 9:12 PM
You joke, but yes, certainly. The biggest restraining factor in this was the whole trans thing, and I'm dealing with that as it comes.

svvord Today at 9:13 PM
Is it a high risk, where you are?

julia Today at 9:15 PM
Yes, but nothing I can't deal with. Whether that's because I'll take on any challenge or because it's not that risky is up to the reader to decide.
Why did I come out? To test my abilities.

svvord Today at 9:16 PM
EASY
Did you have anything else you wanted to add or talk about?

julia Today at 9:20 PM
Posting is the little death. That's all.

chris

it was a shitty site and it was basically the wild west

chris Today at 5:09 PM
i'm chris and i'm a 20 year old university student

svvord Today at 5:10 PM
about since when have you existed on the internet?

chris Today at 5:13 PM
from probably around 2006 i have memories of the internet but no accounts of my own. following that had restricted internet access from the ages of 8 to 14 (2008-2014) and have had unlimited internet access from then onward. i can remember creating my first account on a website in 2008 and have had many since then.

svvord Today at 5:13 PM
what kinds of sites did you make accounts on at first?

chris Today at 5:16 PM
my first account i made was on webkinz and i remember it vividly because i still use the same password! following that i was very active on neopets and particularly the discussion forums on neopets. twitter and youtube were also introduced early, along with email and social music sharing sites (grooveshark) that no longer exist. i briefly remember being active on livejournal as well as a few other forums but i quickly moved on from that to more mainstream social media.

svvord Today at 5:17 PM
what was neopets like?

chris Today at 5:21 PM
it's interesting to look back as an adult because neopets was literally just a heavily modded forum. i was the youngest person i knew there and lied about my age (to the tune of adding ten entire years) because everyone i knew there was in uni and my middle school in response felt weird. there were two separate boards i frequented. one when i was younger which was more so a "whatever you want" type board where you could start a chat thread about pretty much anything (child appropriate) and just kind of pray that people would reply. a lot of this was early fandom and general media stuff and fanbase scragglers at the time who didn't find homes elsewhere, i suppose. the other board was more geared towards the actual game and trading/bartering pets which i assume is irrelevant.

svvord Today at 5:22 PM
Lying about being older online is definitely common lol

chris Today at 5:23 PM
yeah it's concerning in retrospect but i don't know how to make it seem concerning from jump. that's the question isn't it.
for people currently engaging in it that is

svvord Today at 5:24 PM
yeah, it's interesting! did you have specific ways you tried to pretend to be older, or only when ages were brought up?

chris Today at 5:26 PM
oh absolutely! i actually recently got back into my old account and i had a fake major listed as well as constant chatter all over my page about the girlfriend i had had at the time (my 8th grade girlfriend) where i exaggerated the length and closeness of our relationship (cus it wasn't that long or close because we were in 8TH GRADE) as well as using catfish pictures to represent myself. at some point i also started making secondary accounts to be my friends which was really going too far but. honesty is honesty and it's been years and that's true lol. i think that was after neopets though.

svvord Today at 5:27 PM
Wow that's so elaborate, though kind of genius for selling it?

chris Today at 5:27 PM
thanks i'm naturally a very committed person. i think it's the adhd lol. i wanted to fit in soooo bad.

svvord Today at 5:28 PM
You say making the extra accounts was after neopets, was that on more mainstream social media then?

chris Today at 5:30 PM
no thank god. i don't think that ever reached twitter that was on whatever sites i was flitting around on in the interim between them.
grooveshark i guess but literally no one knows what that is anymore

svvord Today at 5:30 PM
Tell me about grooveshark!
Because you're right, I have no idea what that is lol.

chris Today at 5:32 PM
grooveshark was basically a music streaming site that allowed you to broadcast what you were listening to to others and chat in the broadcasts

svvord Today at 5:35 PM
what kind of things did you chat about in broadcasts?

chris Today at 5:36 PM
in that case i have this screenshot cus i think it's a hilarious relic and alsooo

that's a great question i guess we talked about anything and everything. school, anime, whatever music we were listening to, dating. i still have friends from there which is surreal and they're the only cishet men i've ever befriended on the internet. it was a shitty site and it was basically the wild west (unmodded and completely illegal which is why it doesn't exist anymore) but it was like my big start in trying to have a persona bc i was fairly popular

svvord Today at 5:38 PM
what would you say that persona was like?

chris Today at 5:44 PM
i've always gone by r names so my first persona went by rei and was very much the antithesis of everything i am now (but this is also pre a huge trauma so i don't know how much this might play into it). i was very much an extrovert, the mom friend, very quirky xD. i got into a fair amount of arguments over stupid shit i can't remember (notable only because i am so incredibly non confrontational now) i definitely made drama to be interesting and like heavily leaned into being LOUD and popular (in a way that was mostly affected) it's so stupid how kids are on the internet i feel like everyone starts out screaming into the void as loudly as they can
quirky xD as a phrase i did not genuinely use that emoji

svvord Today at 5:45 PM
it really do be like that! a lot of the time it felt like you had to be loud to exist online
what kind of friends did you make with that persona?

chris Today at 5:51 PM
cishet ones and people who i would Never interact with if i met them today. one of them is now in the marines and the other one is a pretty severe meth addict. which you know some judgement to the first guy but otherwise it's just not the kind of people you meet in my current communities. it was very much a different space and it's weird to think about.

svvord Today at 5:52 PM
do you still keep up with them? and how have you tailored your online experience today?

chris Today at 5:56 PM
i do keep up with both of them! we talk on snapchat at least monthly and i talk to one of them like bi weekly which is such a strange thought. i have very much tailored my online experience to be an echo chamber (in a good way?). i don't seek out any discomfort because i dislike my day to day life and have for years so twitter is kind of a safe haven. i have toooons of words and people muted and i fully refuse to argue with anyone and people like that get straight up hard blocked - fyi this is not about just politics actually it's mostly not about politics but i also really dislike hearing repugnant political opinions and filter that shit out as best i can as i get older. my closest friends are people who are extremely similar to me which i guess is the difference im now seeing while thinking about it.
i had a very unsafe 2 year long twitter friendship and since then i am just so quick to hard block when i'm not feeling it. everything is safe space for me when i'm in control and i mean that unironically

svvord Today at 5:59 PM
honestly that's probably really healthy in practice!

chris Today at 6:00 PM
it can be but it also is an avoidant behavior and is sort of like when you're overly sanitary and never build up an immunity to germs and become so healthy you're unhealthy . it's a time bomb.

svvord Today at 6:02 PM
that's an interesting way to put it. do you feel like that's how others might perceive it, or are you worried about how it'll affect you?

chris Today at 6:04 PM
well it's definitely how i think my therapist would look at it if she comprehended it. i haven't ever really thought about it hard enough to perceive it at all so i guess it's how i think others perceive it but subconsciously i feel the danger. when i see people acting up irl it just becomes worse and worse and harder to handle with the passing time lol...i think lol safe space people also don't think about it hard enough to see it that way though ngl

svvord Today at 6:06 PM
that's very fair! its so easy to see when people have Too Online Disease

chris Today at 6:07 PM
HAHA the clinical term...
it's terminal :cry:

svvord Today at 6:07 PM
:pensive:
at the same time, do you feel like you're better able to be more "genuine" to yourself online now that you've made a safe space for yourself?

chris Today at 6:08 PM
it's difficult because i feel like...not to go too far but it's like
since i've been crafting myself personas since i was so young i can't tell the difference anymore and i have no way of telling who i would genuinely be online and who is crafted. there is such a major disconnect between my closeted irl self and my long time male online self that even if my behavior is genuine they're two people in my mind?? if that makes sense
even in my dreams i hear two separate names and know of two separate selves that they imply???
like if my girlfriend is there i'll be called chris and know how to respond and if my mother is there i'll be called emma and know how to respond.

svvord Today at 6:13 PM
that isn't too far at all!
do you consider a "genuine" version of yourself different from something you can be either in person, and thus attached to your physical self, or one where you decide all the variables as your online self?

chris Today at 6:18 PM
i feel like it truly exists only in my mind because both social selves are affected but if i had to choose i would say my online self is closer. but only Just barely and only fairly recently ... this is interesting to think about. i think controlling the variables gives the power to be the true genuine self but the willpower required for that is a huge hurdle .....
did i answer that right?

svvord Today at 6:18 PM
oh yeah totally!
what kind of hurdles do you consider there to be online?

chris Today at 6:22 PM
i guess that i think that when given the opportunity to present yourself in any way you choose because you're starting from blank it is harder to do it genuinely than it is to lie or exaggerate or purposefully paint a picture. especially if you're trying to make friends or build a following aka attract attention. it's hard to paint yourself unobjectively in general but it's even harder under this circumstance i think

vulcan

haha yeah,
it's very exhausting

vulcan Today at 8:04 PM
hey! i'm vulcan. thanks for having me.

svvord Today at 8:05 PM
since about when have you been on the internet?

vulcan Today at 8:07 PM
i've been lurking on the internet since i was around six or seven years old, but i never had a real online presence until i was around fourteen. i was mostly just interacting with people on wiki pages and deviantart, and my presence gradually grew from there.

svvord Today at 8:08 PM
What kind of wiki pages were you active on?

vulcan Today at 8:11 PM
mostly fandom wikis of shows i was interested in at the time! i'm not really sure why i started my online presence on wiki pages specifically, but i took a lot of comfort in the media that i was interested in, and that honestly remains true to this day. at the time, i was moving schools, and i was still relatively new to living in australia, so a combination of those factors definitely drove my need for some sort of comfort.

svvord Today at 8:12 PM
that's relatable, I definitely got more active online when I was moving to new places
what kind of other people were on the wikis with you?

vulcan Today at 8:17 PM
from what i can remember, they were generally older. they shared the same interests as me, and i didn't expect much out of an online friendship beyond that. looking back on it, those interactions didn't have much substance, but that wasn't very important to me because i just wanted people to talk to while things were getting sorted out in my real life.

svvord Today at 8:17 PM
how did your online presence grow from that and deviantart?

vulcan Today at 8:21 PM
absolutely! that still took a couple of years of trial and error. i was desperately looking for a platform where i could interact with people easily, and eventually i found myself on twitter in late 2018. i carried over my interest in art from deviantart and tumblr to twitter, and because i was able to effectively combine my interest in art and my desire to make friends, i remained active on twitter ever since.

svvord Today at 8:24 PM
did you not interact with other people much before twitter, or was twitter just better?

vulcan Today at 8:30 PM
twitter was a lot better, just because i could do so much with the platform. because i was able to make art and post it on there, i was able to grow a following relatively quickly, and gained a lot of friends through my work. but yeah, i did make attempts to interact with people on tumblr, for example, but that was really difficult for me since the layout of the website doesn't really allow for real-time interaction between users, besides DMs i guess? but i wasn't going to start a friendship that way. i was pretty active on discord in the months leading up to my transition to twitter, but i haven't kept up those relationships either. being on twitter was the first time i've ever had long-lasting friendships, online.

svvord Today at 8:31 PM
do you think you try to portray yourself or act in specific ways online?

vulcan Today at 8:37 PM
honestly, being online is where i try to be as honest in the way i depict myself as i possibly, and safely, can. i'm LGBT, and offline i currently live in an environment where i feel very unsafe to be authentic to myself, so the internet has been a sort of refuge for me. i have curated my online presence around my art, yes, but occasionally i'll talk about things that i'm passionate about, as well as show my pride in my culture and interests.

svvord Today at 8:38 PM
do you struggle keeping that separation between your online versus offline?

vulcan Today at 8:43 PM
it has gotten harder recently, just because of how much more active i've been online, but generally it's something that i'm just used to. i've hidden things from my family in the real world. i'm openly gay with my offline friends, and i've managed to sustain romantic relationships for a long time, so i've only really just transferred the tools i learnt to keep myself safe to my online life.

svvord Today at 8:44 PM
do you interact with different kinds of people online vs off it?

vulcan Today at 8:50 PM
definitely. online, there's obviously a diversity of people you can interact with, and you'll find people who have the qualities you want if you know where to look for them. i try to interact with people who share the same interests and beliefs as me, and because of the way i've designed my presence where i'm as inclusive as i possibly can be, finding people who accept me hasn't been hard at all. offline, however, you can't be as specific. while i've made some amazing friends offline, i live in a very small, very white town, and i'm surrounded by people who are very openly ignorant and bigoted. so some of my friends, unfortunately, do share some of those beliefs, and i can't do much to change their minds.

svvord Today at 8:52 PM
do you have to tailor your interactions separately between your different groups, beyond being out online ?

vulcan Today at 8:56 PM
yes. my offline friends don't have access to a lot of the spaces i interact online, because i'm honestly afraid that they'll feel that i can't handle their beliefs and that i'll appear too radical for them. so yeah, it's a bit of a juggling act between how i interact with my friends, my family, and online, while keeping all of these interactions separated.

svvord Today at 8:58 PM
yeah, that can be stressful to mind opinions, especially if there's a major difference in the "popular" opinion in different spaces

vulcan Today at 8:59 PM
haha yeah, it's very exhausting.

svvord Today at 8:59 PM
is your art also strictly divided between online and off?

vulcan Today at 9:03 PM
yeah. i've tried opening my parents up to seeing my art, but they're not very interested in seeing anything from me other than being extremely studious and having good grades. my friends, however, have seen some of the work i've made online, but i mostly try to appear more professional in my work when i'm with them, and therefore i don't show them my fanart. because of that, i try not to appear very professional in the way i present my art online.

svvord Today at 9:06 PM
you try not to appear professional in terms of being more "genuine" in presenting it, or that you do so more casually than if you didn't have to be more professional offline?

vulcan Today at 9:11 PM
i mean, i don't make art for the purpose of commodifying it and appealing to potential employers. my art is casual and strictly for fun, so i don't worry about how i present my art. though, if i'm going to be honest, it's because my finances are monitored and i'm really restricted in the amount of time i do have to make art, so at the moment i don't really have much opportunity to expand my platform
beyond just casual, fun art, even if i wanted to.

svvord Today at 9:13 PM
that makes a lot of sense, so you can't really take commission work I assume?

vulcan Today at 9:14 PM
yeah, unfortunately i can't. i've had people who've asked me for commissions, and i can't do much besides rejecting them. i can't even monetarily support my art friends either, which really sucks.

svvord Today at 9:16 PM
do you feel like you're constrained in how you're able to be online by your offline life in other ways? either because of finances or other?

vulcan Today at 9:20 PM
yeah, i'm not only restricted by my finances, but also in the amount of time i can be online. i have to stay up late at night in order to make art and interact safely under my parents' roof, and when i was living with them, being able to voice chat was very limited, so it was hard to progress some of my friendships. i live on campus now, but the fear associated with taking the risk of being online very much lingers.

svvord Today at 9:23 PM
do you feel like you've been able to enhance your online life at all now that your offline situation has started to change?

vulcan Today at 9:26 PM
absolutely! i've been able to spend more time online, and my sleeping schedule has been so much better now that i'm living on campus. but while i have those luxuries at the moment, i'm currently enrolled in a very academically rigorous degree, so i'm still pretty limited in the amount of time i have to work on my art and sustain my platform, but i'm not as stressed about being online right now, so i'm very grateful for that.

svvord Today at 9:27 PM
that's great!
living Not At Home also opened doors of voice chatting for me lol
its crazy how much of a difference it can make!

vulcan Today at 9:28 PM
yeah, definitely! it's very freeing.

svvord Today at 9:30 PM
and in the opposite direction, do you feel like your online life has affected your offline?

vulcan Today at 9:36 PM
it has, despite my best efforts. when i was fifteen, my mother went through my iPad and found one of my accounts, and ever since she's done everything she can to make sure that i have absolutely no online presence, besides Facebook. she installed parent supervision software on all of my devices, and for a long time i couldn't be online. things obviously became more lenient, since i have managed to be online, but i'm still under constant monitoring. in other ways, being online has made be become more knowledgeable in arts, philosophy, sociology, and world politics, when i previously didn't have much interest in those things, and i've been able to translate what i've learnt to my interactions offline.

svvord Today at 9:40 PM
that's really upsetting, do you think you would be active or do things differently as your freedom online grows?

vulcan Today at 9:43 PM
i hope so, but at the moment that seems like a very far away concept for me, even with the freedom i have right now. it feels like i'll probably get the kind of freedom i want online when i graduate and gain more independence in my offline life. assuming i manage to not get married or whatever lol.

svvord Today at 9:44 PM
was there anything else you'd like to add or talk about?

vulcan Today at 9:49 PM
i guess i've touched on just about everything about my online life, but i do want to mention that i really appreciate that this project is drawing more attention towards how some people will need to form discrepancies in their identities online and offline, because it can be extremely hard for a lot of people to be online, especially if they want to sustain that presence and it feels like it's the only way they'll be able to live a fulfilling life. so thank you so much for this.

floral

I freaked out
and told my mom lol

floral Today at 4:00 PM
Hi, I am floral, and i make either very funny or very sad comics for the internet

svvord Today at 4:01 PM
about since when have you existed on the internet?

floral Today at 4:03 PM
I believe I made my first deviantart account around 12, which was my very first actual alias.
So...that would be 15 years?

svvord Today at 4:03 PM
was that generally where you spent most of your time online?

floral Today at 4:07 PM
Well, when I first discovered the internet around 9 I mostly played the games on the Disney and Barbie websites. But yes, with an actual alias I was mostly browsing deviantart. Especially because there were a lot of OCTs around that time. I think I spent quite a bit of time on fanfiction.net too around that same time.

svvord Today at 4:07 PM
what are OCTs?

floral Today at 4:11 PM
OCT stands for "Original Character Tournament" and were HUGE for a time on deviantart. Essentially a group of people would create a tournament setting that was usually an island or a city of some sort and people would apply with a reference sheet of their character or even in some cases an intro comic. After contestants were chosen, they would be paired off with other contestants in rounds. Both artists would create comics depicting their character winning and whatever the judges chose as the best became "canon" to the tournament and they'd move on to keep fighting.
Some of these tournaments had like subplots created by the hosts that people could integrate into their comics, it was honestly a very collaborative comic experience.

svvord Today at 4:14 PM
that's really cool! were there certain kinds of interactions that came out during these?

floral Today at 4:19 PM
It was very much like a sporting event, most of your interaction was showing support for your favorite character in the comments section, though I am sure some people got too heated about certain people losing and would make fusses. I didn't interact with strangers too much on deviantart on a friend level because I was very much in the "stranger danger" mindset and would not touch chatrooms.

svvord Today at 4:20 PM
Haha probably smart

floral Today at 4:21 PM
I still had this one older guy hit me up for a pregnancy kink commission when I was 13 though, because I drew some Naruto girls carrying my favorite ships babies.

svvord Today at 4:21 PM
oh my god

floral Today at 4:21 PM
I freaked out and told my mom lol

svvord Today at 4:21 PM
everytime i remember what deviantart was like i always black out all of Those Parts
omg

floral Today at 4:22 PM
I don't think she really grasped what was happening and just said to say no.

svvord Today at 4:22 PM
LMAO Fair Enough
About when did you think you started interacting with others online more?

floral Today at 4:26 PM
Well, my middle school friends were even more online than I was and introduced me to a lot of things. It's because of them I started a Gaia account at around 8th grade. I definitely started being less scared at that point and would actively participate in forum art contests or even do commission threads for stupid gaia currency. There was a time we all got very much into the rp forums, and my friend started her own psychic academy one and we made older online friends through that, which unsurprisingly was a lot of drama.
I really actively started interacting with people that had no connection to my irl when I joined this comic website in junior year of high school, which was sort of oct like in which you applied with your character and could challenge other people's to a comic face off that would be voted on by the community. I tried being very active in the chatroom then but I didn't make any lasting friendships. After that I mostly stuck to tumblr mutuals from fandoms.

svvord Today at 4:32 PM
Do you think there was a difference in what you did or who you talked to when you weren't with your irl friends?

floral Today at 4:37 PM
Their wasn't such a big difference in what I did back then, but the people I were talking to were almost always a bit older and I think maybe I tried to act a bit more mature than I would with my irl friends to fit in better.
It was moreso when I started to come to terms with sexuality and identity stuff that my irl and my online fractured. Back then I didn't know anything about myself and actively kept myself in the dark, so I didn't feel the need to be too different than I was with my irl friends, who i am sure all kinds of LGBT now themselves.

svvord Today at 4:40 PM
When do you think that shift started to happen? Or when you realized that shift?

floral Today at 4:44 PM
Well the VERY first instance was when I had a sexy, yaoi boy Shino Abarame I drew myself as a desktop background and it obviously made the neighbor boy uncomfortable. After that I was like, "some things are for online." Seriously though, I think getting involved with that fandom element of boyxboy was the shift which happened in middle school too. It just didnt seem so because 1. all my irl friends were involved too and 2. I had been actively told be the internet it didn't say anything about me personally
After I started talking about being bi, very cautiously, on my tumblr around 4 years ago is when my worries stopped being "oh i dont want my family or certain irl ppl to know my interests," to "this space is sensitive personally to me and I need to protect it"

svvord Today at 4:48 PM
So your tumblr became a safe space for yourself, but one you had to make sure to keep away from offline people?

floral Today at 4:49 PM
Yes, definitely. I might have a few friends my age follow but I made separate art tumblrs for family and people I didn't know well.
It wasn't too hard to do, since after high school the majority of people I'd know were almost exclusively instagram or facebook users.

svvord Today at 4:50 PM
Are you at all active on those sites?

floral Today at 4:51 PM
Definitely not! Facebook is mostly used so my old coworkers can tag me in things and insta has never really garnered my interest.

svvord Today at 4:53 PM
Haha I feel that with instagram, it feels like such a weird system with everything being based on an image

floral Today at 4:54 PM
It is!! And you can't even post your art from your desktop, you have to get it on your phone first
A lot of people I know use it for each other but especially for celebrity culture which is a hard pass

svvord Today at 4:55 PM
Like they follow celebrities mostly?

floral Today at 4:56 PM
Yes, maybe some aesthetic accounts but definitely influencers and famous people mostly.

svvord Today at 4:57 PM
What would you say attracted you the most to tumblr? Or kept you using it for so long?

floral Today at 4:59 PM
Tumblr had an extremely active fandom culture, funny posts, and was honestly the best suited for artists with the tagging system and the formatting of images.
It felt like tumblr absorbed the creative culture of deviantart, while also making it 100% easier to interact with others and made being mutuals feel like it mattered.

svvord Today at 5:00 PM
Did you talk to your mutuals a lot?

floral Today at 5:03 PM
I started to when I was in the fandom around 7 years ago? My Homestuck art never really garnered the attention where I was interacting with a lot of people but this fandom was small enough we recognized each other very quickly.

svvord Today at 5:05 PM
would you say you still prioritize tumblr?

floral Today at 5:07 PM
Absolutely not! I am almost never on there but to repost things from twitter. After the nsfw ban it felt like the entire community moved to twitter and I am very much a "1 main platform" type person.

svvord Today at 5:07 PM
i definitely feel that
it's so stressful with how many platforms people are on

floral Today at 5:09 PM
I don't know how some people do it honestly. It never feels like I have the energy to equally spend time on multiple platforms.

svvord Today at 5:10 PM
as an artist do you tend to have trouble with using social media for promoting your work?

floral Today at 5:13 PM
With twitter it's become especially hard considering how finnicky the algorithm is. Practically no tagging system means you depend on your followers to expand your works visibility but if you aren't consistently posting there's a good chance you aren't even ending up on their feeds. I don't think I ever thought about "optimal posting times" until using this platform full time, it's crazy.

svvord Today at 5:14 PM
do you think The Algorithm has altered how you post or make work?

floral Today at 5:19 PM
I definitely have to consider what looks more shareable from a first glance than ever before, along with posting at the "right" times. I post comics for instance and I have now started to not only make sure that I don't link my website in the first tweet since I have heard the algorithm will hide those tweets but also I try to include a colored cover piece with two other images. Because the color helps draw the eye regardless of what ever the damn crop does to your work but also if you have 3 images in one post at least the first will be fully visible.
The more shares you get right after posting, I believe, just increases the visibility overall. So I've had to think a lot on that. I also don't promote my work through retweets like I would on tumblr because again, the website will Get You.

svvord Today at 5:21 PM
do you think twitter's also altered how you interact with others online?

floral Today at 5:24 PM
I am definitely interacting more with people than I did on tumblr, I feel more encouraged to comment on art and to make jokes off of people statuses. I feel much more on guard too though, regarding replies to posts. Stream of consciousness or reactive posting feels so heavily encouraged versus tumblr that I feel the need to be more aware of what I'm posting and how I respond to others.
Before all you had to do is just not answer an anon and replies to posts couldn't be easily answered anyways so it was whatever, but twitter the main point is to interact.
I feel like I am supporting people on a more personal level but also the vulnerability and potential to act on emotion is more prevalent

svvord Today at 5:28 PM
it's definitely a double edged sword

floral Today at 5:30 PM
Yeah! The Algorithm putting things intentionally on the tl to make people mad doesn't help either.

svvord Today at 5:31 PM
Did you have anything else you wanted to add or talk about?

floral Today at 5:33 PM
Hmmm... I think one thing I'd like to say about online identity is that over the years since having more people follow me for art and the general public's acceptance of social media is that who I am online is very much a different facet of a public persona. There are very different things that are "safe" for me to share between a conservative irl setting and a progressive online one, but it still takes a fair amount of self awareness and self regulation of boundaries to maintain.
I think some people have the impression that online spaces are where you are your most honest self but I think the idea of all your posts being representative of your "truth" is just another means of performing. The strangers online don't exactly know you better, they just know different aspects to what makes a very complex and ever evolving individual.
That's at least what ive come to understand, both through curating my own experience but also in trying to find empathy and keep perspective when interacting with others online.

svvord Today at 5:34 PM
that's really true!

floral Today at 5:36 PM
Lastly, and i don't wanna sound weirdly preachy or anything like that as someone who is not an expert on the subject; but I think as we continue to be Online as a species we have to actively impart conflict resolution and de-escalation habits into our communities and general behavior. We depend a lot on instinctual cues to access when it's time to step away irl, and the fact we are now available to so many more types of personalities than we're used to and otherwise would choose to be around, we have to recognize our own abilities in protecting ourselves and the way we choose to act. I don't know, maybe that doesn't need to be said but it does feel like regardless of irl or online people tend to forget you have no control over any person but yourself and there is power in that.

sofi

point at it and think
'that sure is a thing!'

sofi Today at 2:05 PM
Hi! I'm Sofi. I'm a biochemist and I also dabble in some arting myself

svvord Today at 2:05 PM
About since when have you been on the internet?

sofi Today at 2:07 PM
I honestly can’t remember. My dad has always worked with tech and I remember going on my family's first desktop computer and all the dial-up noises for going online, I must have been very young, 6-ish, around the year 2000

svvord Today at 2:08 PM
That is pretty early! What were your first distinct memories of being online?

sofi Today at 2:09 PM
I remember going on sites to play games, like miniclip, girlsgogames and the like. Later neopets and club penguin.
On the more social side of things, at first I remember just msn and exchanging e-mails with a particular irl friend over lines of changing colour and font

svvord Today at 2:12 PM
Were you online a lot as a kid?

sofi Today at 2:17 PM
Not that much I think? It was more of an extension of my life as a kid than its own thing if that makes sense. It was only until later that I became more involved with online spaces in any meaningful way

svvord Today at 2:18 PM
And what was that like?

sofi Today at 2:24 PM
I feel like in fandom spaces I tended (and tend) to be on the older side, relatively speaking; and I see teens growing up with Twitter and like, on one hand I feel like it was good to not be exposed to some of the stuff kids are now? and being able to like, absorb and respond to things as an adult, but at the same time I feel like being online opens you up to a lot of tools to figure yourself out that you might have lacked otherwise. I think I would have figured some stuff sooner if I had been more online earlier lol
I started using Tumblr around 2013, because I needed a site to host images for a physics class, which sounds like a hilariously out of left field use of the site now! and then I just stayed around and lurked

svvord Today at 2:27 PM
I also used tumblr for image hosting!
the private post feature is kind of a game changer

sofi Today at 2:27 PM
It's pretty useful for stuff like that! and as an archival site

svvord Today at 2:28 PM
Definitely, with tumblr I can actually look back in a way that's practically impossible on twitter and most social media sites.

sofi Today at 2:28 PM
YEP

svvord Today at 2:29 PM
What was lurking on tumblr like then?

sofi Today at 2:39 PM
It was a great site for sharing fanart and discussion about certain media, and it also developed its own kind of absurd culture by being entirely populated by people who were impossible to sell things to? I remember the memes, accruing mutuals at the time but not really talking to anyone, with the exception to one very good and my very first online friend that I still talk to to this day. They're on Twitter now as well though.
I used to get interested in whatever thing was popular there just to see what the fuss was all about. Prime example being Steven Universe.
It was also the main place where I saw people talking about queer themes, which was a mixed bag with discourse that often wasn't conductive, but overall an overwhelmingly good thing to be exposed to, I think. It just wasn't something I had seen anywhere else by that point.
I still use it occasionally, only just to crosspost or check a certain tag

svvord Today at 2:42 PM
tumblr was kind of a pioneer as a place for people to talk about gay stuff online
at least at the semi-mainstream social media scale it was

sofi Today at 2:44 PM
Yeah! There's a certain specificity you get from meeting people online that you don't tend to get circumstantially irl, and tumblr was a good platform for that

svvord Today at 2:46 PM
If it's cool if I ask, how did you make your friend?

sofi Today at 2:49 PM
We became mutuals by chance, I don't even remember what it was initially that made me follow them! Probably Pokémon I want to say? but we basically built our friendship over dms

svvord Today at 2:50 PM
Did you notice a difference between messaging them and messaging your irl friends?

sofi Today at 2:57 PM
Definitely. Online you're sort of a blank slate to the other person, with them not having any preconceived notions of who you are besides how you present yourself in the moment. It was helpful to have them to talk to about stuff I was only just letting myself even think about then! There's also the language switch. My meat-space life is basically carried out in Spanish, living in Argentina, while for my online activity I interact mainly in English,, sometimes even to Spanish speaking friends I've made online. That's an aspect about that compartmentalization I maintained that I don't know what to make of other than to point at it and think 'that sure is a thing!'

svvord Today at 2:59 PM
Even as an English speaking person I notice how heavily English is prioritized online!

sofi Today at 3:04 PM
It really has become the internet's lingua franca. Which is pretty cool in that you can understand and meet people from different places and backgrounds, but also yeah, it's only the people that either have it as a first language or have access to learn it to a good enough level in the first place; which definitely leaves some out by the wayside

svvord Today at 3:06 PM
The internet tends to serve both as a great equalizer but also creates entirely new hurdles, including even just the ability to access it.

sofi Today at 3:06 PM
I am nodding

svvord Today at 3:06 PM
LOL
Do you think you present yourself differently online than you do offline?

sofi Today at 3:14 PM
Tough question,, I think I present myself largely the same way, in how I try to be, I'd say, thoughtful and kind? but online it's easier to communicate a bit more freely, but to perhaps immediately contradict myself, only pick out the bits and pieces you want to show. It's like you on bold and italics.
I do think I use my Twitter as a stream-of-consciousness place to dump some of my thoughts that I wouldn't necessarily subject people irl, unless I knew them better. Or sometimes not even then.
Also there's some lie-by-omission kind of thing that happens irl where I just let people assume things about me because it's too much of a thing to correct them, and that just doesn't happen online. You can be clearer upfront about what you want to share about yourself without it being a big issue.

svvord Today at 3:17 PM
online people basically sign up to hear what you have to say and offline its a lot harder to know who's actually interested

sofi Today at 3:18 PM
That's a great way to put it

svvord Today at 3:18 PM
also, unfortunately, i don't have a bio for people to read before interacting LOL

sofi Today at 3:19 PM
nfskbfhks I'm picturing giving out a little presentation card in the flesh

svvord Today at 3:20 PM
business cards

sofi Today at 3:20 PM
Yes! Those! haha

svvord Today at 3:20 PM
on the back there's a kin list and a 'before you follow'

sofi Today at 3:21 PM
LMAO

svvord Today at 3:22 PM
Have you ever felt constrained by the limitations of the social media sites you've used?
either between switching from tumblr to twitter, or just how they work in general?

sofi Today at 3:27 PM
Hmm,, we've touched on it before but it would be great if Twitter was a functional site by ways of being able to find old posts, it's very hard to do that unless you remember specific wording and
know your way around the search option. So basically it would be good if it took something akin to the tagging system from tumblr
Twitter was a bit of a learning curve but I think it's that way for everyone. Once I was active on it I found it way easier to make friends on it somehow, just lucking out in some group chats in the beginning, circa 2017, and then earnestly replying appreciating people's work or thoughts about something.

svvord Today at 3:33 PM
I don't think earnestness is all too common on twitter, haha

sofi Today at 3:33 PM
Sad yet true fkwfkhadb

svvord Today at 3:35 PM
Do you think being online has shaped your offline world?

sofi Today at 3:41 PM
I've kept them pretty separate, with offline stuff seeping into online pretty one-directioned-ly. At the same time being in the spaces I have been/am online has shaped who I am now in a way that's pretty indivisible and vague, and I think it becomes evident to anyone who knows me irl at least somewhat well.
Also I wear Homestuck merch sometimes people are bound to ask me about eventually, lol

svvord Today at 3:42 PM
Having read hs is definitely a litmus of "I might have spent too much time online"

sofi Today at 3:42 PM
A dead giveaway

svvord Today at 3:43 PM
Did you have anything else you wanted to add or talk about?

sofi Today at 3:47 PM
hmm I would add that being online has boosted some creative outlets for me like drawing and recently writing. And with the latter I've been able to bridge the gap and incorporate some of the stuff I do offline in the lab in my writing, and I think that's pretty cool! And it wouldn't have happened without conversations I've had and friends I've made online
Also I think we lack the language so far to describe how we build our identities off vs online, because it's still relatively a new thing on a larger humanity-scope scale, and I think this project is really cool in that it explores that!!

harry

fuck offline
I want my friends ;-;

svvord Today at 9:14 PM
hello, I'm sword, and I make art of dubious quantity and quality

harry Today at 9:14 PM
Hi I'm harry, I do basically the same thing

svvord Today at 9:14 PM
about since when have you existed on the internet?

harry Today at 9:15 PM
I've been using the internet for a long time, but I can clearly recognise my first time as being 'online' as we know it to 11 years old

svvord Today at 9:15 PM
where did you first exist then? was there any particular site?

harry Today at 9:17 PM
I was watching kids cartoons a lot, and I used to google them religiously after I watched them. One day I stumbled across fanfiction.net and it seemed to me to be ENDLESS content for the cartoons I had been watching.

svvord Today at 9:18 PM
that's pretty much the holy grail to getting into fandom haha

harry Today at 9:18 PM
I can see why
I think there's a kind of personality that gets very absorbed into stories, and things like fan fiction, amvs or fan content feels like a way to extend the magic into eternity

svvord Today at 9:21 PM
I definitely feel that, you never want to stop experiencing those stories!

harry Today at 9:21 PM
Yep!

svvord Today at 9:21 PM
Did you comment on any of the fanfics you read?

harry Today at 9:22 PM
I think so? There used to be a 'comment if you want more' trend and I used to comment, because I wanted more
I mostly lurked though

svvord Today at 9:23 PM
Very fair
Was there a point at which you started to interact directly with others online?

harry Today at 9:24 PM
Yep! Same site at around 12, I think I found my first 'send me your OC and I'll put them in the story'
I was in loooooove with that, and I started making my own characters and sending them to the author, then checking back every day to see if my character was in yet
They would show up for like a paragraph and I would lose my mind every time

svvord Today at 9:26 PM
Oh man that would be the peak of my existence at 12
Was that still on fanfiction.net?

harry Today at 9:26 PM
Yep! I never moved to livejournal or wattpad thank god

svvord Today at 9:27 PM
YEAH definitely best for a youngster

harry Today at 9:27 PM
I think at like, age 13-14 I started drawing and I was pretty good at it
So that's when I joined deviantart

svvord Today at 9:28 PM
dun DUN

harry Today at 9:28 PM
The secret come out

svvord Today at 9:29 PM
I think a lot of internet artists from that time can definitely relate, it was kind of The art site combined social space

harry Today at 9:29 PM
Yep and it was the best one at that time
I was born in 1995, so when I was on deviantart it was like, 2007-9

svvord Today at 9:32 PM
Did you talk to other people on deviantart then?

harry Today at 9:33 PM
I did! It was a lot more engaged

svvord Today at 9:33 PM
What was that like?

harry Today at 9:33 PM
Mostly fine! The audience there was overwhelmingly young for the most part
I had my first weird interactions with adults
But mostly just posting my OCs and being very happy if I got one comment
I didn't really participate in any big community activities I was scared shitless of stranger danger
Which, wise, because my closest online 'friend' at the time was 21

svvord Today at 9:35 PM
Ah!

harry Today at 9:35 PM
Mhmmm
He still messages me lol

svvord Today at 9:36 PM
I hope in a nice older friend way and not in a creepy way jeez

harry Today at 9:36 PM
He seemed nice! But it was a bit weird he was friends with an 11 year old

svvord Today at 9:37 PM
Augh yeah
Especially with sites like deviantart it was always interesting to see who reached out for better or for the more uncomfortable

harry Today at 9:38 PM
Yep
This part of my online life is kind of boring tbh
I was mostly super passive

svvord Today at 9:38 PM
Ohoh, when would you say it got more interesting?

harry Today at 9:38 PM
Oh god not for wayyyyy later
I read homestuck in 2010, and I got a lot better at art at that point
I joined tumblr because that's where the homestuck people seemed to be
And I posted for a while until I did my first fan art that got 1k likes
And that was it for me lol that was the crack cocaine my brain craved

svvord Today at 9:40 PM
those likes get addictive IMMEDIATELY

harry Today at 9:40 PM
I started drawing a LOT, still not very good because I was like barely 15
But I got more followers and people actually commented on my rambling posts
I made a friend who was my age and we talked a lot, I sent them fanart and they sent me fics we made for each other
And I found out I was gay! So I retreated a LOT into online

svvord Today at 9:42 PM
That will definitely lead to that

harry Today at 9:43 PM
That was probably the first time I became AWARE of the disconnect between myself and the people around me
I was always super awkward and I'd been getting a lot more awkward as I grew up and realised I just wasn't very good at being social, or that I had much in common with other girls
But in a place like tumblr, being gay was so uncontroversial even in 2009 that it was very easy to come to terms with it in that environment
But it was NOT okay in my school, or my house
There wasn't a single other openly lgbt kid in my grade, even now I think there was like only one other who came out after school and we never talked
So that whole 'double life' thing got very real

svvord Today at 9:47 PM
Did it become harder to keep them cleanly separated as you were able to be out online, or easier with having that outlet?

harry Today at 9:47 PM
Kind of the opposite, I got very good at compartmentalising, nobody even knew I had a blog
I only ever really told my therapists about it, my mum knew my internet stuff because she kept tabs on everything but my parents weren't interested in my art so I kind of skated by

svvord Today at 9:48 PM
That's nice at least

harry Today at 9:49 PM
Hahahahaha
Yeah it worked
Kid me had the right idea, that school sucked and I was not a tough cookie I couldn't have handled homophobia
Or transphobia, god I had so many egg moments at that age
But I had no idea what trans people were at the time sooo

svvord Today at 9:51 PM
Did you end up having different kinds of friends in school/offline than you made online?

harry Today at 9:53 PM
Like different kinds of people?

svvord Today at 9:53 PM
yes!

harry Today at 9:53 PM
Yes absolutely
The people I had to pick from in school was very limited
I went to a private school, we had maybe 100 people in the grade max
My friends were mostly friends of my BEST friend who was very protective of me, without her I don't think I really would have had any
But online you're allowed to talk to anyone so of course!
I talked to dorky queers all day

svvord Today at 9:55 PM
The dream

harry Today at 9:55 PM
I'm doing it right now :)

svvord Today at 9:55 PM
//UuU//

harry Today at 9:56 PM
Did you want to move past high school?

svvord Today at 9:56 PM
Now that you're older, would you say those lines have started to blur more?
you read my mind lol

harry Today at 9:56 PM
Hehehe
Yeah
I got online brain very clearly in 2015-6, when overwatch came out
I had made some friends online who were actually local and we hung out, and I posted art that got SUPER popular
I made a bunch of comics and people interacted with them constantly, ended up with like 20k followers within a month and IMMEDIATELY disabled the ask box

svvord Today at 9:58 PM
Smart

harry Today at 9:59 PM
Yeah, so I was kind of freaked out by how many eyes were on me
Obviously I had never really dealt with anything like that before
And I joined a discord with people who promised to be chill, and there were other artists there that I admired
And voila
You have the harry of today, basically unchanged

harry Today at 10:01 PM
So innn 2013 I was drugged and assaulted, and they used ketamine
And I spent like, 2 years in a very foggy haze not really doing well in school and being a bit of a shithead
And when I came out of that, and it was time to face being gay, and being traumatised, and being gender, real life was just too much
Online was such a balm it really felt like an escape
I would just draw for hours and hours and forget to eat, and talk on the discord and read fanfiction
It was super unhealthy but I had become like a different person in those 2 years there was basically zero desire to see what else life had to throw at me

svvord Today at 10:06 PM
Being able to go into a place removed from your physical self is really tempting

harry Today at 10:07 PM
It is!
It was coping, and I wasn't in an environment where I was around people who were like me, and if I ever met them at cons or stuff there was usually a huge disconnect because you know
I've lived a bit of a life, and a lot of white online cis people haven't really lived that
So I would talk about doing drugs, or getting into fights, or stealing shit or casual sex and it was like, a chasm in front of me and everyone else
I had one foot in one life and one foot in the other and I didn't belong in either
I still feel that way

svvord Today at 10:11 PM
I'm sorry you had to go through that
And then to get out the other side and end up isolated because of it too is a real nice added salt in the wound

harry Today at 10:12 PM
It's cathartic to look back and get bitter about how I got fucked up, but honestly the only upsetting thing is how hard it is to connect with people
I actually really like who I am
If it was just my own company forever that'd be okay I think

svvord Today at 10:14 PM
I honestly feel a bit similar sometimes. Coming from a weird family situation, I'd see someone online briefly mention something super specific and I still think about it, that someone else might understand even a small part of me

harry Today at 10:14 PM
Yeah
It's an intoxicating thought

svvord Today at 10:15 PM
And it's a bit easier to find those snippets of connection online than in person, at least in my experience. even though then it's hard to build a connection or ask more about it

harry Today at 10:15 PM
Sometimes shit happens and you feel yourself detach just a bit more from people who live comfortable lives
Yeah I think with online people are looking for each other
And it's easier to find other people
I've kind of slid back into that state I mentioned earlier where I'm not really doing anything other than being online, post the disaster that was me coming out as trans
But now I'm making money doing it so $$$$$$$$$$

svvord Today at 10:17 PM
Money Always Fixes Everything
Or at least is nice validation :sob:

harry Today at 10:18 PM
Makes it a bit easier, I do enjoy eating

svvord Today at 10:20 PM
Do you see yourself coming to a place where even if you're spending more time online, you feel healthier doing it?
Or trying to find that balance of off and on

harry Today at 10:20 PM
Healthier than before? Of course
I think it's generally unhealthy to spend all day in your room
And I think socialization outside of online helps you keep the balance
But that need for a community is a lot stronger than it was when I was 14 because now I don't really have anyone

svvord Today at 10:22 PM
Once you're an adult you don't really get that built in school socialization

harry Today at 10:23 PM
I got back from Korea and broke up with my bf after he hit me, I came out to my parents and they kicked me out, my brother is in Denmark, my best friends are in Korea or went back to their home countries, I have basically one close friend and he's moving away in 6 months
So yeah I'm pretty isolated
And now that I'm trans making friends is an absolute nightmare, I was very social a couple months ago but I've abandoned that after a few really bad encounters

svvord Today at 10:29 PM
With all the risks and the pull of online it def feels safer sometimes than running the gamut of bigotry and physical risk offline.

harry Today at 10:30 PM
Yep
I've turtled up a lot

svvord Today at 10:30 PM
We need to figure out instant blocking for real life

harry Today at 10:31 PM
I should be allowed to mute men

svvord Today at 10:32 PM
That would solve like a good 10% of my problems. I've similarly seen myself not wanting to bother with the effort of offline friendship and social life
Do you find yourself acting a particular way online vs offline? How you interact with people differently?

harry Today at 10:35 PM
Ummmm I'm nicer online
There's a lot of things like content warnings and stuff that have me like Concerned about people's health and safety
Bruh when I say I don't give a shit about telling people they're cunts irl I'm not lying

svvord Today at 10:36 PM
Sometimes they need to know

harry Today at 10:36 PM
I'm like 'why don't a have any friends :pensive: '
I know why, it's because the patience for people in my life has bottomed out

svvord Today at 10:37 PM
Do you think you're able to be more patient online? Or it just doesn't come up as much

harry Today at 10:37 PM
I just like you guys more
Like, genuinely
People in our discord are funnier and sweeter and gentler with me
I want to pay that back and take care of you guys
I don't care about cis men.
And even cis women, I'll cut them some more slack but I'll call them out too

svvord Today at 10:39 PM
You definitely deserve better treatment

harry Today at 10:39 PM
:heart:
You want to know what the number one most common thing I hear from these people is?

svvord Today at 10:39 PM
Oh?

harry Today at 10:40 PM
'You should try and understand that your parents are just having a hard time with this'

svvord Today at 10:40 PM
WOW

harry Today at 10:40 PM
Maybe a half dozen times in the last 6 months

svvord Today at 10:40 PM
Thats so shitty

harry Today at 10:41 PM
It sucks, but it's because they don't know
Because the people I want to be around DO know
But those people are ONLINE and not in MY TERRIBLE CITY

svvord Today at 10:42 PM
As is the curse of offline

harry Today at 10:42 PM
Fuck offline
I want my friends ;-;