The Internet Used to Be a Freak Show. Now It’s a Wellness Retreat.
R.I.P to social media's golden age
Social media has always been garbage, but it's not even interesting garbage anymore. At least when the garbage was on fire, you got the ooooo and ahhhh of bright lights and sensory overload. Now we are just left with the excremate, piles of rubble that we are told is gold.
The feeds are bad, posting sucks, everything sucks. My algorithm is schizophrenic as fuck and hellbent on pushing me to suicide. Posting on main feels like shaking a tin of coins, a morsel of attention for the poor please???
It wasn’t always like this. My latest addiction is YouTube videos of mostly cancelled YouTubers at the height of their fame. Tana Mongeau’s blackout drunk GRWM in Mexico with Trevi Moran is my Cocomelon.
Tana represented the girl who eats hot chips and lies, walks the mile, and sits in the back of class with patchy af foundation and a lash hanging on for dear life. As a little gay boy with some attitude, those were my JUDIES in middle school. She was your problematic bestie who said shit that made your head swivel to check if anyone overheard. What do you mean you peed on Shane Dawson for clickbait?
And it’s not just Tana, I’ve been going through the circuit: Trisha Paytas, James Charles, Shane Dawson, Trevi Moran, etc. Half of these names are basically on an FBI watchlist, which is what makes them so fascinating. Watching them feels like reading ancient texts saved from a book burn. I know they’ve all done horrible things – my media digest is not in any way a moral barometer – but, I’m not getting any fabulosity to replace them, so what is a bitch to do?!
Mind you, ~5 years ago these were the biggest internet celebrities on earth. Every brain rot connoisseur remembers where they were when Tati Westbrook dropped BYE SISTER, her hour-long takedown of James Charles, followed by his clapback, No More Lies. That was my Super Bowl. I have to rewatch the videos annually to maintain physiological homeostasis. Similarly, the image of that segway gay who ran Tanacon into the ground is etched into my brain.
God, I know it’s controversial, but I miss that era so fucking much. From around 2015 - 2021, content was a fever dream. We had progressed past the early 2010s’ edgelord humor and millennial Buzzfeed listicles, to hit a stride in funny, zany, weird shit. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real in a way that influencers could only dream of being today.
Now, “authenticity” is a corpse we’ve bludgeoned into.. wholesome vibes? And the vibes are completely manufactured to create an artificial personal brand? I miss real authenticity, raw and unfiltered, before we realized that we were playing in wet concrete. Our digital footprints felt malleable in this vast uncharted expanse. Anyone could be a content creator, indeed most of influencers were just nerds and chronically online teenagers using the second-hand Canon EOS Rebel T3i they got for Christmas. Now, most emerging influencers are industry plants manufactured in high-rises across NYC and LA. Does anyone think John and Hank Green would blow up on today’s internet?
I’m the same age as Tana. She grew up, so did I, and so did the internet. But the internet didn’t necessarily mature, it metastasized into a loose image of itself dulled of any rough edges by the growing panopticon surveillance state and brand capture.
Influencers don’t do crazy shit anymore. There’s no drama, just “my 5-9 before my 9-5” girls running their schedule like the Navy, PR unboxings from polyester Instagram brands that their audience can’t afford, and “what I eat in a day” vlogs entirely made up of $30 smoothies and salads. I’m tired of watching girls who bring nothing but their lethal face card, only to learn her mom is a supermodel and her dad is Palantir’s CEO. Bitch, CUT IT. I want to see a mukbang of you zooted on the couch inhaling Taco Bell and talking shit about a YouTuber whose name is bleeped but everyone in the comments has agreed is Jake Paul. PLEASE.
In tandem, cancel culture morphed content into an ever-sharper spear of professionally edited, boring ass media. The internet is more sanitized, but no cleaner. The poison has just festered, evolved, and learned to disguise itself. Your mental health is far more compromised by the constant assault of perfect people and horrific news cycles than it ever was by Trisha Paytas gooning for Mitt Romney. That felt campy. Today’s ragebait is like a Jubilee debate over “Should we shoot trans people with a gun?” under the auspice of promoting mutual understanding or whatever.
This cultural transformation is fueled by an economic engine. I watched a recent Tana vlog where she celebrated her SeatGeek sponsorship because her channel was finally “brand safe.” In her older content, she had a running bit about how she was unmonetizable because of her flagrant obscenities, inappropriate jokes, and none-stop shit talking. There’s no clearer illustration of this phenomenon than TS Madison, formerly known Big Dick Bitch on Vine, who went viral for posting videos helicoptering her massive dick, fully uncensored. Iconic. Now she has a podcast, a Beyonce feature, and a regular judgeship on Drag Race. I love these transformations. Genuinely, they all look happier, healthier, and are securing their bag in a way that wasn’t possible when content creation was a cottage industry.
But I am mourning the social media that felt more like mythology than technology. The internet was a Hydra of grassroots communities tugging in every direction. It was surreal, like a secret society of misfits. I was on Tumblr calling people in my High School peasants because they didn’t know who Lana Del Rey was.
Social media’s golden age is over – for now at least. Maybe that’s for the best. It’s easier to detach this leech on our attention now that it’s so bloated and unsightly. Before, the internet leech was a Labubu, something trendy to differentiate yourself as in-the-know and leechable. Now, everyone has a leech and the host is starting to wither.
Sometimes I think of things that happened on the internet a decade ago that would actually end society now. For instance the headline “Amanda Bynes on Drake ‘Murder My Vagina’ Tweet: ‘I Was Serious But I Was Also on Drugs’”
I'm obsessed with this take. Because all these new influencers are just as problematic as the old ones, they just do it behind closed doors now. At least the drama was entertaining! Now everybody's just selling something.