You guys can read this if you want, but I'll sum it up for you in a sentence:
"All of the internet habits I have today derive from playing Neopets too much in my youth."
But here's the long version:
I am a member of a generation deeply and fundamentally impacted by the internet. It was a part of my childhood, and arguably, it was a part of my growth as a person. It affected my friendships and my ability to relate to people. Still, to this day I’ll check my email a dozen times and instant message for hours, but having a conversation over the phone is difficult. My future is doubtless online as well. Indisputably, my life—past, present, and future—is inseparably linked with the internet. It is a vital resource, not only for information but also for communication, and my world would be completely different without it.
The first thing I really ever used a computer for was playing videogames. The internet became an invaluable resource. How else was I to look up cheat codes for my GameShark? I certainly didn’t figure out the secrets of Mario Kart all on my own. The walkthroughs and strategy guides online helped me along through the puzzles and challenges I couldn’t overcome by myself. But why face these challenges alone? At a young age, I learned that the internet was an invaluable tool to access information easily and quickly, much easier than going out and finding a book. But of course, looking up some cheats and tricks didn’t get me completely immersed in the internet. I could simply print out what I needed and rejoin my friends at the console, and with the hard copy, I would never need to return ever again (until I lost the papers and required a new copy, and as soon as I printed a new one I would find the old one again). Then, somewhere around sixth grade, I made an amazing discovery. There were other people on the internet. And I could talk to them.
Neopets.com was the beginning of my new revelation. After several months of puttering around the site on my own, having relatively nothing to do with my fellow players, I discovered the forums. I met other users, and even started talking to them outside of Neopets through instant messaging. Suddenly I had online friends, people I had never and would never see in person chatting with me regularly. At that point in time, I probably spent more time interacting with people online than I did in real life. Neopets also encouraged my love for writing with its weekly “newspaper.” It had creative stories written by other users, which inspired me to start writing stories of my own, though I never had the nerve to submit any, or the conviction to actually finish them for that matter.
Unfortunately, Neopets was not an entirely positive experience. My account was hacked. I was sad to have lost my pets, and all the time and energy I’d put into them, but the lesson has stayed with me and kept me wary. After all, if people have nothing better to do with their time than steal Neopets accounts from children, any of my online information could be at risk. This friendly little children’s site also taught me how the internet masked my real life identity. It was easy to lie about my age, just to get a full-access account. Neopets also encouraged users to sign up with their sponsors to get free items. I must have done at least a dozen fake accounts on various websites, using gibberish for all of the personal information, and even the email address—this was back before confirmation emails. The ease with which I would lie online is startling, especially since it was done not even for free things, but for free virtual rewards. I have always been an abysmal liar in real life, and I seldom ever try. I can barely even lie over a telephone, but the internet gave me a shield that allowed me to hide if any of that phony information ever tried to come back and find me.
By high school I’d grown out of Neopets, though I still visit from time to time for nostalgia’s sake. I fell out of contact with my online friends. My love of writing found new life in fanfiction.net. I became engrossed in internet-based fandoms where I found a wealth of people who were all interested in the same things that I was. Before I even knew what a lurker was, I mastered the practice. Perhaps shyness kept me from becoming involved in the fan communities I frequented, but they were fascinating to read through and inhabited by people I felt I could relate to, even if I never got up the nerve to contact them. My brief stint with fanfiction ended the moment I realized that I had to eliminate all traces of copyrightable characters from my writing in order to truly own my work. I left fanfiction.net and joined the online picture sharing website deviantART.com, where I once again began making online friendships. At the same time, my real life friendships began to take on an online element. My small knot of friends and I all linked ourselves together in the virtual world as well. We all joined LiveJournal.com, a less popular alternative to MySpace that allowed us to communicate and coordinate. Making a single post on LiveJournal that we could all see was much easier than making all the phone calls.
The effects of cavorting around the internet in my youth stay with me in my present. I recoil at the thought of picking up a telephone, but I continue to stay connected to my friends through email, LiveJournal, and instant messaging. My desk is my base of operations in my room. I spend so much time at it that I needed to purchase a more comfortable chair to spare my back. In order to get feedback and opinions, I upload my writing and art on deviantART where my real life and online friends, or even complete strangers can give me commentary and critique. Browsing art online helps inspire me creatively, and commenting on other people’s work not only makes me new friends, but also brings more traffic to my gallery. For me, the internet is a social experience. Sitting in front of my computer, I don’t mind that I’m the only one in the room, but I feel lonely if none of my friends are online and I don’t have any email. Fortunately, even if no one I know is online, there are always people out there who are easy to find and talk to, and when I’m feeling antisocial, I simply sign off or close the browser.
Email is a vital form of communication, even with people I see every day. It allows my professors to send reminders and helps me ask them questions even outside of their office hours. Email and ANGEL are essential class resources, but they are also venues for club announcements. Online I can manage my bank account, shop, research, and talk to my friends all at the same time. Still I remain wary of internet security. I have never uploaded a picture of myself online, and I am cautious about posting my name, the names of my friends, and specific locations that would make it easy to find me. I refuse to give out my address in public places, even for my friends to be able to see, and when signing up for user accounts I rarely include my last name or address. If these fields are required, I’ve had enough practice to be able to make up something fake. This is why I don’t have a facebook. I still need that shield of anonymity when I interact with strangers online.
In my future, this dependence will only increase. Should I pursue further education and attend graduate school, I will need the internet to research schools and scholarships, both of which frequently feature online applications. If I choose to enter into the workforce, the internet will still provide a research tool, and it will also help me network people in my chosen profession. Email can help me contact or stay in contact with people I find online, or those I meet here at Penn State who can eventually contribute to the career I eventually choose. In the likely event that this career requires me to travel frequently, I will doubtless turn to the internet to make most, if not all of my travel plans. In unknown places, I can use the internet to find familiar stores in the area, or, failing that, order the products I need online. Travelling all the time will make staying in contact with my friends and a potential significant other if I don’t utilize the internet to stay connected with them. By this time, part of being friends with anyone will involve reading their blog and trading emails or instant messages, simply as a typical part of a normal friendship.
From an early age, I learned that the internet was an invaluable resource of knowledge. My encounters with several multi-member online communities—Neopets, LiveJournal, and deviantART—taught me that the internet could be used not only to make new friends, but also to network the friends I had in real life, manage them, even when we were close together, and stay in contact when we were spread apart. The internet has also instilled in me a great sense of paranoia and a fear of allowing my personal information to be available online. All of these experiences in my past accumulate into my internet usage in the present, with the added element of a significant amount of my schoolwork occurring in an online setting. I have every bit of faith that this trend will continue: as I get older, more and more of my life will be intertwined with my online activities, and my prior experiences online will shape how I use the internet in the future.
