Life Before Scrolling: The Internet Isn't Real

This newsletter is different today -- no music.

May 16, 2024

Once upon a time we had to get to know someone in real life.

It’s hard to imagine life before iPhones and Androids, before WiFi before Instagram and TikTok, before Tinder & Hinge, before Uber and DoorDash, and before Spotify and podcasts. I feel like I’m suffering with internet fatigue, but how did we live before selfies and memes?

Get off the internet, but not yet. Keep reading!

There was a time we accepted boredom & God forbid you told your mom you were bored.

Malls were busy before Amazon. Planning carefully before you left the house to meet with friends. Making sure to catch your favorite radio show so you can record your favorite songs. Using encyclopedias and dictionaries to research for school. Magazine subscriptions — who remembers J-14? Or passing notes in class and folding them into little squares or triangles to make sure it was sealed.

Looking up movie times and job openings in the newspaper. Going to the music store on Friday to buy a new CD. Being unreachable after school or on the weekends and having to see people in the flesh. Game nights were lit. I was the queen of Scrabble and Monopoly wasn’t for the weak. Did anyone have trust issues growing up with Uno?

Who else called their mom’s job an ungodly amount of times with anxiety that her boss would answer? I still remember my mom’s work number. The yellow pages that were delivered to your door and you had to look up a phone number. It was the original Google.

Putting quarters in the pay phones seemed like a convenience. We actually had to remember phone numbers. We had to get to know someone in real life. We talked on the phone for hours and tied up the phone line. Caller ID was heaven sent when it made its debut. And who remembers when AOL came on a CD that you had to physically download onto your computer? So many of us were caught up in chat rooms or on AIM. A/S/L, anyone?

Having dial-up caused a lot of arguments because using the internet tied up the phone line. In my house we had a computer room designated for the big ass computer and printer. Remember how expensive ink was? We also thought life was so much better when we had the ability to print directions from Mapquest… if you even had access to a computer and a printer.

Also, I feel old remembering my first job at Burger King paying $5.15. High school doesn’t seem so long ago, but next year is my 20 year high school reunion. 👵🏽

Fast forward ⏩ Smartphones.

There was a time when we had no option but to enjoy being in the present moment without capturing photos and videos. You really had to be there. When we weren’t oversharing, overstimulating, or oversaturating our lives with so much information.

When the world was slower. When there was less opportunity to compare our lives to others. Before going viral, becoming famous seemed like a real dream because all we had was television, movies and magazines to look at.

It seemed harder to waste so many hours of the day because we weren’t mindlessly scrolling on a screen. We were more sensitive to tragedy and trauma because it wasn’t always in our face. There was no cyberbullying because you could get bullied in real life by real people not by someone hiding behind a keyboard or phone.

And there was the pandemic…

Working from home and remote learning was cool until it wasn’t. All that screen time caused tech fatigue. Zoom parties were a thing. Instagram After Dark was frisky. Verzuz was nostalgic while we were quarantined. DJs were born during lockdown and people picked up new hobbies and skills. Creativity was necessary to keep us sane.

Social media engagement increase 61% during the first wave of the pandemic.

We are more attached to screens than people.

So much of our cultural innovation relies on AI and the algorithm to solve our problems. Our love life is hacked through dating apps, most of which are owned by the same company (Match.com) with the purpose of commodifying and monetizing. Social media perpetuates the idea of perfection, but who’s really posting their failures?

Creating > Consuming.

The internet is a double-edged sword.

Someone else’s content has become more important than the content of memories we are actually missing out on. The world is scrolling through life instead of living — clicking, swiping, and liking.

Newsfeeds are endless but our time isn’t. The algorithm tells us what to watch. It feeds us recommendations, suggestions, and “for you” pages. The algorithm does not and will not solve our problems — it will only contain them. Life is what you do when you stop scrolling.