The Internet That Made Me

a mental archive

I have been actively writing a newsletter on Substack for five months. I hate this place.

Maybe that’s not fair. It’s definitely better than anywhere else. Unlike X, I don’t get accosted with snuff. Unlike Bluesky, it is a functional website. Unlike Facebook, it is not infested with AI zombies engineered to goad dementia in the elderly. Unlike Instagram, I have an account. Unlike Tiktok, I have the app on my phone. Unlike Youtube Shorts, I can’t watch the scene from Now You See Me 2 where they toss around the playing card microchip, or the Family Guy episode where Stewie and Brian time travel. Okay, maybe Youtube Shorts is awesome.

As the content aggregator where I make part of my monthly income, Substacj is, at this juncture, extremely creator-friendly. Beyond convenience, my audience actively grows from being hosted on this platform far more than it would if hosted independently.

I really, really like writing a newsletter. I like the weekly ritual, I like keeping with my self-discipline, I like that I can write about “whatever,” so long as I think it will attract a decent audience.¹ I’m far from being able to financially support myself on writing alone, but I certainly make enough money to justify the time investment, without it eating too much into time I spend on other creative ventures.

I also really like reading other Substack posts. There are over a dozen newsletters that I read devoutly at both the free and paid tier. I have recommendations turned on for my profile - go check them out.

There is a lot of writing on Substack, but with an average of, I’d estimate, 500 essays a year that could pique the interest of a given user, there isn’t much content for the passive scrolling, unless you count cross-posted tweets or LinkedIn AI slop or 2018 mental health memes. So a user hits the stuff outside your bubble faster than anywhere else. That discovery functionality, which has introduced me to several excellent publications and certainly brought some of you to mine, mostly depresses me.

I’m not going to reiterate anything not already articulated better by Clare here or in these tweets from Helena (also pictured below).

I’m just like…Why are all these SWERFs trying to be Joan Didion? Why are these cruel, juvenile women trying to pass off neocon mysticism as wokeness? What do you, as a gay guy whose username is a 30 Rock reference, get out of feigning moral superiority about some book that got published a decade ago? Why must I cater to self-loathing teenage girls or intellectually insecure millennials in order to get boosted visibility on my writing? Why must I be accosted with dozens of charlatans masquerading as pundits on the vanguard of scientific and historical radicalism? Who cares about any of this? Why are none of these viral essays meant to last beyond the moment of consumption?

Barring the politically unsavory, most of this is both irrelevant and, at worst, annoying. I don’t have to engage with any of it. My audience continues to grow, and I like this website as a platform to access and share long-form essays with my friends and followers. I am okay with never becoming a professional Substack writer. And if that does, by some odd miracle, come to pass, it will not be because I have changed some immutable fact about my style or subject matter. None of my frustrations matter. I can just close the app. I usually do.

But this week I wanted to put forth a bit of a referendum anyway. There are a lot of teenagers and college students on this site. I’m in my mid-20s, so of course it feels like I know less than I ever have before. But I understand how it feels to assemble a worldview out of intangible digital debris you stumble across as a kid. Most of it cannot be boiled down to one thing or another, and that’s okay.

I wanted to write about unfashionable internet, stuff that is not discourse. This is personal, I guess; it’s certainly not universal. But I want to steer clear of nostalgia or hagiography. Below are bits of the internet that have shaped me, the supposedly ephemeral things I have been unable to shake. Most of this is from the 2010s, because that’s when I was a teenager. Some of it is only accessible via the Wayback Machine. Some of it has disappeared altogether and I have only my questionable memory to go by. There are a couple motifs undergirding the list, though I think most of that is coincidental. It is certainly not a comprehensive list, but it’s a start.

The only rule is that nothing is

Without further ado, let’s begin:

Reading Dead LiveJournals

I was never much of a forum kid. I suppose I was on Letterboxd in the mid-2010s; After the freaks migrated over from Something Awful and IMDb, that became the hub for niche film discourse that didn’t require an expensive server rig hooked up to a private torrent tracker. I was on Twitter (we’ll get there) and Tumblr (we’ll get there!). I stalked certain Reddits (what did I say!). But the blog-as-public-diary is a kind of freedom I longed for but could never properly access.

So I read a bunch of Livejournals in the early 2010s, mostly those written in the late aughts by women ages 18-23. Most of them have been scrubbed from the internet. But I loved them. They inspired me. At the time I longed for their confidence, their vulnerability, their self-assured notions of identity and desire. Looking back now, I can see through the hyper-manicured self-obsession towards a terrified longing for connection and purpose. I feel nothing but love for these girls, who are now women, and have always been strangers. I see them in my waitress at the diner, or in the woman eating leftovers at the rave. I imagine kids these days read Substacks for the same reason. I hope it makes them feel less alone.

You Know What, Let’s Actually Circle Back to Letterboxd For A Second

I don’t think people understand that Letterboxd has been around for 14 years and for most of its existence it was a place for dorks. This review of Scooby-Doo, which got flooded with hundreds of comments debating the merits of Marxism and vulgar auteurism, crashed the entire website for several hours. This review is also the first time I remember thinking rationalists on the internet were actually quite dumb. This is also where you can find the most prominent remnants of my teenage digital footprint. I have reviews on there, under my current primary username, from the ninth grade. Remember, the internet isn’t forever unless you accidentally let it be and then your friends find change the group chat name to a typo you made a decade ago.

Sam Donsky’s Actress Rating Scale

On the other hand, the loss of former Ringer staff writer Sam Donsky’s tweets is tantamount to the burning of Alexandria. There are hundreds worth spotlighting and archiving, but none will ever beat this: The 1-100 scale for performances from actresses judged solely by whether or not they should have cast Lindsay Lohan instead.

This is the only record of a massive thread, and it’s a screenshot I took seven years ago.

It’s just so good. And look, internet personalities who you form parasocial bonds with are a dime a dozen. Statistically, I am one of them for you. But Sam Donsky was one of mine. I hope he’s well.

Felicity Jones in The Brutalist is an 80

Marisa Abela in Black Bag is a 2

Either role in The Substance is a 70

Mikey Madison in Anora is an 83

Aimee Lou Reed in White Lotus is a 26, but any other character is a 100

Amanda Seyfried in Seven Veils is a 34

Lilly rose-Depp in Nosferatu is a 93

Lesley Manville in Queer is a 96

Two Specific Articles About Buzzfeed

For most people old enough to run a Substack, they likely spent time reading, writing for, or wanting to write for Buzzfeed. The 2015 article, "I Hate Myself For Not Working At Buzzfeed", was so big my mother sent it to me when I was in Spanish class. I did not want to write for Buzzfeed but I wanted to make money by writing, at least enough to do other writing. It didn’t matter if it was a fake job or a job only rich people could get: It was a job, for writers, that people seemed to really value. Its mere existence gave me hope, however stupid and misjudged that looks in retrospect.

In 2019, with a massive round of layoffs at Buzzfeed, ex-staffer Jason Sweeten went rogue and posted a quiz entitled, “Do You Still Have a Job at Buzzfeed?” It was taken down pretty quickly, but not before garnering loads of attention. It seemed to mark a real shift in how this kind of content mill writing was perceived. Not only was it perceived, posthumously, as a real job, it was perceived as a thankless, grueling, unstable one. These presaged years of layoffs that leave writing in the tenuous state of DTC delivery and self-promotion for even the most established, venerated journalists and acclaimed prosaists.

Re: Gawker

Peter Thiel basically killed the entire internet as a place to make a career out of writing. Anything that soldiers on either does so at a vastly decreased scale or off the fumes of legacy media. Learn more here

“Bye, Sister”

The Nymphowars episode basically covers it, but -

Somebody’s sexuality is NOT an escape room. I love nutriceuticals.

Possibly in Michigan

I watched this because it appeared in Youtube recommended tab off of something. i obsessed over it like it was a creepypasta. I watched it hundreds of times. I showed it to all my friends. It was a short film, it was video art, it was a scary video I could put on while we smoked weed. I made this film my personality. I memorized not just the dialogue but the exact sing-song rhythm of the words. It experienced an initial boost, as did the rest of Cecelia Condit’s work, in the early 2010s. Possibly in Michigan then experienced a second surge in popularity in 2019, the audio being used for gore makeup and horror Tiktokers. Still, it feels like a secret when you watch it. It was made before the proliferation of the web, let alone video sharing, but I cannot imagine watching videos on the internet without first thinking of Condit. I have spent the past decade-plus trying to recapture the feeling of that initial discovery. It helps that it holds up completely.

Anita Sarkeesian

The cruelly ironic fate of Anita Sarkeesian is that she is the most objectified woman on the internet. She is not necessarily sexualized, but she has been stripped of any agency in her career, her life’s narrative, and her cultural impact. The first moderately successful feminist video essayist, she was bullied and doxxed into oblivion at the dawn of Gamergate. Hundreds of misogynists have made careers out of mischaracterizing her arguments and, mostly, inciting targeted harassment. Dozens of Youtubers made a career out of defending her and her ideas. Anita herself, though, does not have a career of her own. She has completely left the public spotlight. She is thought of the first martyr of a hate campaign that became the blueprint for the next decade of radical conservative movements in America. She is barely mentioned anymore. She has been used up by the content mill. She still deserves better.

Punchdrunk Reddit

For three years in a row my birthday present was a ticket to Sleep No More. This was well into its run, far past its prime stint as Art of the Moment. I did not care. I was obsessed with it anyway. And for the 8,757 hours a year that I wasn’t at the McKittrick Hotel, I was thinking about it, reading about it, talking about it. I read the r/sleepnomore Reddit daily for multiple years of my life. I was obsessed with mapping out a real, transient physical space I could never explore completely, experiencing a show with others that I would only ever truly know alone.

As a piece of theater, it was sexy and novel and impeccably designed and ungraspable and pretentious and too-showy by half. It closed in 2024, which is probably for the best. Despite precautions put in place from the beginning to halt inappropriate behavior from guests, cast members reported sexual harassment during performances. Any future immersive experiences, if they ever are to exist again at this scale, will have to radically reshape what it looks like in order to protect the performers. This is virtuous and good. Still, I mourn, loosely, that I will never be able to will never be another space I have a comparable relationship to - one where I can be there and online at once, where I construct a real, dimly lit space from third-hand rumors and text displays on an LED screen.

SuperWhoLock

This is bending the rules because I did not, in fact, get into Supernatural or Dr. Who. I barely got into Sherlock, because waiting two years between seasons when you’re in middle school means that you’re a whole different person next time it’s on the air. But I loved, deeply, to listen to my friends explain it all. The stories sounded so cool when it came out of their mouths. When I watched the shows themselves, they didn’t have the same magic. I loved mixing up their favorite fanfictions with real episodes of the show. I would excitedly google recaps to see if their predictions had come true. I loved seeing the internet through my friend’s eyes. I loved internalizing my friend’s opinions on the best arcs and worst guest stars. I loved entrusting them with my view of a show, of a fandom. I loved that they liked me enough to do it.

The Final Fantasy VII House

Every once in a while, there’s some random news story, or game, or internet tall tale that I become convinced explains everything about the world. Sometimes, it’s all three.

Such is the case with The Final Fantasy VII House, the story of a bunch of unhoused trans kids being trapped in a glittery, rancid apartment and forced to LARP in bigoted, sexually violent, straight-up torturous ways at the behest of the group’s leader. The cult/true crime angle of the story is not the draw here. It’s the fact that this this story is the obvious end-point of hyper-niche internet sanctuaries. The article is a decade old, and the events there in occurred at the dawn of Web 2.0. But it feels like the Rosetta Stone for everything, from Undertale to the Zizians. We’ve all been there.

The Omegle Eulogy

TW: CSA

The urge to rubberneck something like this is nigh irresistable. If you go to double-u double-u double-u dot omegle dot com, the one-time anonymous web-based video chat service, you’ll be greeted with quotes from C.S. Lewis and Douglas Adams. Any true rationalist afficionado already knows where this is headed. Besides, everyone gets groomed on Omegle at some point or another. Why not gawk a little at the guy who enabled it for 14 years?

But really, the whole thing just makes me so sad. I’ve never read the entire manifesto, because at a certain point my eyes glaze over, as the tell-tale linguistic tics of mania. A survivor of IRL CSA sought to create a sanctuary within the safety of online communitiy, only to foster, out of a duty to his libertarian ideals, a breeding ground for the creation and distribution of child porn. And he refuses to acknowledge the breadth of this reality, contorting himself into increasingly ridiculous thought experiments in an effort to justify his creation. Interfacing directly with the real person behind what was once this vague, omnipotent evil that traumatized millions of children, only to find out he was no different than them, a shell of a person and totally delusional. The creator of Omegle was ruined by the same cultural forces that he perpetuated by explicitly trying to live in direct opposition to those root violences. There is nothing vindicating about such an obituary. It is only upsetting.

I did not put this on the list because I think it’s funny, though it certainly is. (“the telephone can be used to wish your grandmother ‘happy birthday’…”) It is here because I have thought about it every single day of my life for the past two years.

Honorable Mention: Homestuck

This is obviously the most important piece of internet culture ever. It is one of the most influential things ever, full-stop. The podcast network Ranged Touch did a whole series about this, Homestuck Made this World. It is rigorous and pleasant and comprehensive in a way I could never be, even in cursory summary.

Everything I Cut Out:

Lil Peep’s Death, Hetalia Cosplay, Red Letter Media, Max Landis Writing About Carly Rae Jepsen, Das Racist, The Split Attraction Model, Azealia Banks Getting Trapped At Grimes’ House, The Zola Thread, NetNanny, MIA Anti-vaxx, X-Rated Arthouse Films on Pornhub, Hot Allostatic Load, Kony 2012, Quinta Brunson Vines, Smith College Girls for i-D Magazine 2004, Archive dot org, Girl Walk // All Day, Khan Academy, Resident Advisor, Sasha Grey, The Consent Tea Video, “This Is America,” Bean Dad

If I want to circle back to any of these, or add some others, I’ll put together another follow-up post. If you’d like that, let me know. Feel free to comment what particular internet events have stuck with you: I am sure there are plenty that I’ve forgotten, and even more that I’ve never encountered in the first place. I’m excited to hear your responses.

love ya lots and stay safe,

helmet girl xx

1. Which is fine, by the way. I don’t think it’s some great crime that I can’t write about Jacques Torneur or the Gormenghast cycle for a public post and get decent traffic - that’s what the paid posts are for