Death of a shitposter

Mar 05, 2025

As a millennial/Gen Z cusp (cuffed my jeans in college but don’t remember 9/11), I’ve never not had access to a computer. My first digital memories are from when I was in kindergarten. My parents gave me a small window of time to play educational games on the family computer. I sat on a big leather chair in the dark “Computer Room” and the system would wheeze and whir as I categorized shapes, colors, letters, and numbers. It was a full sensory experience. I loved trying to play Encarta Mindmaze, too. I had no idea who Martha Graham was or where the Mariana Trench is located, so I don’t think I got very far. However, I was delighted by the ability to roam around a virtual castle and speak to knights, lords, and ladies. I probably never spent more than an hour on the computer as my parents were (rightfully) concerned about its effects on brain development. I spent the rest of my time reading, drawing, playing with friends, bothering the cat, or playing piano. The computer was something exciting to briefly enjoy — for educational purposes only — and then leave in order to get back to real life.

In elementary school, my peers started increasing their time on screens. I remember being so jealous of my friends for being able to play Nintendogs and DDR at home. (My parents were, rightly so, staunchly against non-educational video games.) Conversations started to gravitate towards what kids were watching on Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, and Cartoon Network (cable channels that I only had access to at friends’ houses or on vacations on the hotel television). While I personally wanted to talk about Beatles trivia, my friends were gossiping about Vanessa Hudgens’ leaked nudes. I still remember listening to the premiere of Camp Rock on AM 1460 Radio Disney like I was in the 1920s so I could have talking points for the next day of school.

Middle school accelerated the digital divide between me and most of my classmates. All of a sudden my classmates were obsessed with porn and messaging each other on AIM. I got my first cell phone (an LG Neon) in 7th grade so I could contact my parents after field hockey practice, but it had no Internet access and I was only allowed to use the family computer for schoolwork and YouTube. I guess if I was really curious I could have tried harder to seek out the stuff my classmates were talking about, but I honestly didn’t have an interest in sex. (If you can’t tell, I grew up very religious. My mom taught at my Sunday school.)

My self esteem started to tank. I felt like I was always saying the wrong thing, like my peers were all of a sudden speaking a different language from me. I was friendly with a group of girls at school, but they would constantly exclude me and make fun of me for my juvenile interests like musical theater and, like, not porn. I became increasingly uncomfortable around said girls because I sometimes felt like I wasn’t a girl the way they were. I felt like I shouldn’t be allowed to touch other girls or look at them. By eighth grade graduation, I had pieced together that I was bisexual and deeply hated myself for it. I became extremely socially anxious and withdrawn, unable to make eye contact with most people.

I also got an iPod Touch at the end of eighth grade. I could finally stay up all night on the Internet like my classmates. Although some of the memes on iFunny went over my head, rage comics and Bad Luck Brian and Philosoraptor cheered me up in my increasing time spent alone. My social anxiety only increased, resulting in panic attacks, snowflake vision, and dissociation. Although it did not become a bridge to connect me to my peers, the Internet became a source of solace.

I got my own laptop for schoolwork in high school, which led to the creation of my Tumblr account in eleventh grade. As a nerdy closeted kid, I was hooked immediately, discovering shows like Supernatural, Doctor Who, and Sherlock (SuperWhoLock). A formally model student, I now left all my assignments until last minute. I stayed up all hours of the night learning how to customize my page, reading fan fiction, and reblogging memes about Sherlock and Watson being gay. Online, I could curate my appearance however I saw fit — based not on my physical appearance, but on the shows and music I loved. I could lose myself in the obsession of these TV shows and momentarily transcend beyond the shackles of being a queer, panic-attack-prone teenage girl. I watched all the seasons of the shows obsessively, thanks to the advent of streaming (bingeing) on Netflix. I soon discovered other shows like BBC Merlin and Robin Hood. I got into British YouTubers like danisnotonfire, AmazingPhil, and Zoella. Tumblr also introduced me to 8tracks, a website where I listened to playlists that included Lana Del Rey, Marina and the Diamonds, Arctic Monkeys, Bastille, The Neighborhood, and The 1975. In real life, I remained mostly detached from my classmates, assuming that, since I thought I was a freak, they had drawn similar conclusions.

College was when my meme obsession got taken up a notch. Before, I mostly enjoyed nerdy fandom memes or puns, but then I discovered a whole new genre of absurd memes. Some were just no-context images like a goat in the middle of a metal performance. I remember staying up all night, crouched in the bathroom on a family vacation giggling to myself because I found a “cursed meme” page on Facebook that was filled with such images. I joined Filthy Frank, Eric Andre, and Rick and Morty Facebook meme pages as well (I know). I took an art history class and related such memes to the Dadaist movement, and used it to justify my mindless scrolling. There was just something deeper about the whole genre. I felt seen. I related to the masculine or androgynous energy and absurd nature of the posts, as I myself felt masculine or androgynous and absurd.

Socializing got a little easier as I joined college radio, community theater, and the school orchestra. I actually did a lot, despite the snowflake vision. My quirky interests were finally starting to pay off. I also came out, which kind of helped. Idk. (I could write a whole other essay about the concept of coming out.) A huge social plus was when I befriended my college boyfriend’s male friends. I learned from them that the whole surreal/absurd comedy thing had always been a thing in anime and on Adult Swim. I was elated that there were people in real life who had the same exact humor as me. It turns out I just hadn’t grown up with cable. Although they always felt like my boyfriend’s friends first, it was comforting to relate to likeminded individuals in this way. By senior year, I still had panic attacks now and then, and part of me still hated being different, but I was starting to emerge out of the dark cloud of anxiety that had hung over me for 10 years.

Graduation set me back a bit. I did AmeriCorps. It sucked. COVID happened. It sucked. Spent a lot of time doomscrolling and evaluating my life and really disliking myself. Who didn’t?

Jump forward to the summer of 2021. I moved to a cute hippie town for grad school and started working at the local coffee shop. COVID had forced me to come to terms with my queerness and I was starting to feel more confident in myself. Living with a bunch of drag queens and kings didn’t hurt, either. I became close with one of my coworkers who would show me animated Cum Town clips and Playboi Carti leaks. We would go to McDonald’s late at night and talk about Camille Paglia and Seinfeld over dollar apple pies. I remember one time, we went to a bar with a mutual friend. I showed said mutual friend a picture of James Gandolfini next to a guy in a SpongeBob costume. Our friend laughed and asked me to send it to him. All of a sudden, he was pulling up one of my favorite meme accounts on Instagram and posting it! I had no idea that it was that easy — I thought you had to worry about timing and algorithms or whatever. My barista friend and I joked for a while about starting our own meme page with one of his other friends, and eventually, at the same bar on December 3rd, 2021, we pulled the trigger. After a year, my friends had stopped posting but it became more popular than ever under my vision. What a trip!

I had no idea that it would get so big. Before my decision to delete, it has reached over 46k followers! It has been endlessly affirming that people have found a community because of my shitposting. The beauty of it was that I could post whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted, and people liked it! I took pride in being “chronically online.” Something that had once been a solitary, lonely activity, developed out of anxiety and social isolation, was now getting piles and piles of positive feedback. I could post anything from a Steely Dan song to a Jersey Shore meme to a picture of Big E. Cheese to a meme about living in Bushwick and I would get thousands of likes. Strangers were agreeing with my takes on music and theory, and asking my opinion on things as if I were some sort of expert! Models and actors and musicians have liked my posts. One of my favorite DMs was when Grace Freud asked me about one of my posts and I was able to tell her I was such a huge fan. Real-life acquaintances have followed me and reposted me without knowing who I was, and then been super impressed when my identity was revealed. The whole thing has been a crazy shot in the arm. I wouldn’t have done anything differently. All this is to say, the Internet holds a special place in my heart for comforting me at my lowest in high school, giving me a sense of belonging, and affirming my identity as, well, a freak — but a freak deserving of love.

Since leaving grad school, moving to New York, starting my professional career, and starting a band, I’ve had to buck up a lot and confront my insecurities head-on. I’ve learned to advocate for myself and choose relationships and activities that enrich my life. I have so much less time for scrolling because I have shit going on! And I want my life to continue to blossom, which means actually resting when I get home from work, not just scrolling on Twitter with Sex and the City in the background for three hours (something I’ve done an embarrassing amount of times). I want to grow my attention span back and read books and think deeply about them. My phone addiction kept me from doing this, my brain conditioned by years of escapism and dopamine hits. I knew I wanted to get better, but every strategy (deleting the apps, setting time limits, etc.) failed, and I didn’t have a concrete incentive in order to enact real change.

Social media has begun to feel more and more sinister over the past few months. (I know this is a common observation — sorry if this is coming off as trite.) I became more and more angry with myself when I realized I had been scrolling for 30 minutes. I started to visualize Elon and Zuck personally stealing my time — Zuck with his evil alien face and Elon with his repulsive 12-year-old-4chan-user aura. I became increasingly more aware that the time I spent on their apps resulted in cash rolling in for them. Not only were they stealing my data, they were stealing my time! I noticed my friends were starting to post less, so Instagram started to feel like a weird ghost town with a shitton of advertisements.

All of a sudden, posting on the meme page brought me no joy. It felt like yelling out into a wasteland. Posting silly little images feels vapid now. I know that people have their reasons for staying, and I’m not trying to be prescriptive at all, but I’m saying for me, personally, Instagram and Twitter are over. Instagram is trying to be TikTok 2 with its Reels and relentless advertising and shady algorithm prioritizing “creators” over everyday people. Twitter is just a brain rot circlejerk that keeps folding more and more conservative posts into people’s feeds. I’ve never personally gotten into TikTok but it seems deeply evil. It doesn’t feel like there’s anything left for me on these apps. The sincerity and sense of connection are gone. They’re shells of the platforms they used to be because people are fucking greedy and evil.

Anyway, that’s why I am starting my new chapter here. I write to you today as fully formed as I have ever been. Knock on wood — things are going pretty ok for me now. I just don’t feel the need to be “chronically online” anymore, because I have so much going on offline. All this is to say: meme culture, which used to be the most important thing in my life, feels dead to me and I no longer need it. I’d like to get back to the idea of the computer/Internet being something I can use for a limited time and easily walk away from.

Maybe I’ll finally win Mindmaze.