I was thinking about this too—growing up in the ’90s and early 2000s, I was right before the whole social media boom. MySpace was still a thing when I was doing this, and I think Facebook had just come out. Tumblr was around too. I think I missed a lot of what came after.
Kids these days, or people younger than me, have their entire self-worth tied into social media—being accepted by a community and being liked. Instead of your “community” being, what, like 50 people you actually know growing up—those 50 people judging you, liking you, giving you praise on a vague, inconsistent basis—now you have the entire fucking planet doing it.
That’s where you get girls posting pictures of their tits online, getting any kind of attention, positive or negative—they don’t give a fuck. I think when you grow up in that kind of environment, the type of attention doesn’t really matter. It’s just that you’re getting attention.
For women, I think it’s easier when you’re young—you have something people want. You have your looks, your body, so that’s what you go for first. Even dudes—it’s like, how ripped can I get at the gym and show that off. It’s all pretty low effort. You’re doing the easy thing. It’s not about having original thoughts—it’s more like, “Hey, I have a body. People like looking at bodies, so I’ll show it.” Easy slop.
But I digress on how much social media sucks.
I was thinking about if I’d been born like 10 years later—how fucked that would’ve been with all the stuff I posted on this site and elsewhere. Some of that, if it were done today, probably could’ve blown up and ruined my life.
So I’m actually really thankful I was born when I was. When I was growing up and building this site, people actually had their own websites. It was like—how cool can you make your CSS, HTML, PHP site? How much better can you make it than someone else? Before all that faded and everything turned into the gram and social media.
I’m honestly glad for that, especially with my personality. A lot of people I knew—especially younger dudes—were just angry. And that anger comes out in different ways. In a more “cancelable” society, it’s tough to put yourself out there when you don’t know any better. I didn’t know any better. I’ve read some of my old posts and thought, “I can’t believe you said that. I can’t believe you did that.”
I think we all kind of sign a social contract at some point, but when you’re a kid, you just don’t know any better.
So yeah. Glad I wasn’t born later.