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The Permanence of Digital Space
I’ve been trying to find my voice on this Tumblr ever since I got it. I think it’s evolved from a repository of hilarious images and videos I stumbled across in the wee hours of the night to astute social observations to disrepair and neglect to an extension of my Twitter account. I still don’t know what I want it to be.
A little story: A few weeks ago, I was sitting in the egg office with George when I remarked on how bizarre it is that, as a 25-year-old American, I have had an internet persona for my entire life. It says something, I think, about the role of posturing in social interactions, appealing at once to total strangers and a close social circle. I remember having an AOL profile, a Xanga, LiveJournal, DiaryLand and of course Friendster. I’ve been through it all on social media, even before it had a name or a profit margin. Most of it probably has to do with me being an introverted only child, but interacting with people on the internet when you are very literally in adolescence and trying to find your voice probably shaped me in ways that I won’t even recognize until I read (and retweet) in a New York Times article someday.
The best part of the story— one that I haven’t really been able to articulate until now— is that we both ended up in an office in Williamsburg in 2011, reading our journals from different times in our lives. He had a blog in the September 11 Web Archive at the Library of Congress because of his 9/11 photos; I had my old password-protected Xanga, spanning from 2001-2004, the latter part of high school and early college.
It is indeed strange to realize the passage of time through this lens. Every once in a while, one of us would chuckle aloud or grimace at something that we wrote long, long ago. 9/11 was a pivotal time in everyone’s life, but to a young newlywed living in Manhattan, it was way different than it was for me, a high school student in Chicago. For George, it was before he and Jennifer had kids and before he opened egg; for me, it was before I had fallen in love (and in love and in love…) or visited New York City or read The Corrections. Things pass, lives change and time is parsed in these ways that we can’t even begin to understand yet. It’s really interesting to get a glimpse into the way I thought back then, what I considered important and to get a sense of how I’ve evolved.
If my digital life began as something I did to nurture my adolescent exhibition tendencies, then right now I’ve got two feet firmly planted in digital posterity. Not that I want my children or their children checking out my Tumblr after I’m gone or anything like that, but it is quite nice to have a journal to consult years down the line, just for laughs or to compare notes.
And that’s what I’ve decided this space is. I don’t see myself posting long-winded rants like this very often, simply because of the restrictions of the medium. But my goal is to have a space where I can post, blog and reblog things that are significant to me, right now, in 2011. It’s a personal space, and hopefully I won’t have to fight the same losing battle against “professionalism” that I try to negotiate on Facebook and Twitter. It’s also completely public (for now) which carries its own set of quandaries, but I figure I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it.
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