The Internet As We Know It Is Over. The Only Thing Left Is to Go Outside
We used to have fun online, right? Or I did, at least. Every summer in the mid to early aughts, instead of getting a job or hanging out with my friends, I luxuriated in months of unfettered internet access on the computer already in my bedroom. I'm surrounded the last generation with a childhood that straddled both digital and analog media, but I always knew which one offered me the most expansive worldview. I joined forums and social media sites, I laughed at memes and made my own, I read journalism from different continents, started and abandoned blogs, watched reruns of The Daily Show , torrented the most brutal true crime documentaries and watched them in the middle of the night while my parents were sleeping. I loved the internet. My “real” life was boring, but the internet? That was where I was always permitted to have some fun.
We are all, decidedly, not having fun online anymore. Instead, the internet has become a magnifying glass for the worst atrocities happening in the world: ICE is kidnapping random people and comptrollers off the street, political officials are getting assassinated , there's a genocide in Gaza, a famine in Sudan, renewed violence in Kashmir, andeveryone is mad at poor Ms. Rachel . Summer has barely started and I'm already looking at my calendar, trying to figure out how I can wring out more pleasure between our now-daily reminders of facism. We get so few summers and I want to enjoy mine, but I can't seem to pry myself off the internet. When I was younger, I was inside and online because I wanted to watch Legally Blonde 2 , illegally. Now, it's because I need to find out if the cops are raiding the coffee shop I like to go to, or if another plane has fallen out of the sky for no apparent reason.
For a long time, we viewed the internet as a distraction, or a comfort. It was the place to go to avoid the doldrums of your regular day, to find a recipe, to prove your friends wrong at trivia. Maybe there was a brief period where we thought of it as a panacea, that a greater reliance on digital spaces would solve all our problems. It would, at least, make it easier to organize dissent. But now, as we sink further into autocracy and as war spreads from the United States to Israel to Iran, the internet's purpose has shifted dramatically—it's a place that fuels panic, a combat zone, an instrument used by both compatriots and villains. There's a purpose to be online, but the fun of it has been drained. Take it from an internet addict now in rueful repair: this is the summer to slam your laptop shut, link arms with your friends, and go outside to touch some grass.
Online, touch grass is an oft-repeated quasi insult, a way to tell your opponent they've spent too much time scrolling and need to reestablish a relationship with the sublunary. “Can you go touch some grass?” a friend told me a few weeks ago after my 30th spiral about the cruelty of deportations and how insane it is that there are still women having children with Elon Musk. “Just go run your hand through some leaves in a tree, at least.” I used to resent this directive, but now it rings in my head like the only thing left to do. I used to scroll through Instagram to see what my friends are up to, but now it's all infographics about how many Palestinian children have lost a limb. What else can I do other than go outside and touch some grass?
There are still tendrils of pleasure and joy left on the internet, sure. Memes about the president's military-themed birthday parade (how's that for a Presbyterian quinciñera) were certainly welcome distractions from the prospect of, ah, nuclear warfare . But there are no more sacred spaces left. Once, you could scroll through Twitter and read only posts from your friends. You could get lost in an informational maze on Reddit about the invention of the BlackBerry Bold. You could even foster a nascent crush on an F-list celebrity on Tumblr! Now, a brief stroll through We're witnessing the real-time impacts of capitalism or mass shrimp farming or climate change or gun violence, or all of them within the same five minutes.
There was a time I'd beg my mother for more time on the internet; now, I'm desperate for situations that take my phone out of my hands. “Oh, a funeral? Yes, I’d love to go. Churches have awful wifi.”
The internet we have now is perhaps not the gathering space we want, but it might be the one we need. Invariably, though, the more and more the internet is tied to our activism, the less compelling it becomes as a space for leisure. Once, you went online to find out what people were talking about—what jokes they were making, what conversations you were missing. Now, we're online to find out which kindergarten class ICE is invading, what pro-abortion organizations to donate to, and how to help your neighbors if they're hit with tear gas.
It's not that our online experiences should be spaces of less activism, less information, and more distraction. We don't live in a world luxurious enough for a digital space free of pain. The internet is just a tool, and that's never been clearer than it is right now. A tool can be deployed in service of anything, which is why the internet is currently a tool of political oppression, of social resistance, of the distribution of both accurate and false information. We treated the internet like it was an invention akin to a wheel, something we could harness. But the internet is actually more like the tools we used to make that wheel: you can do anything you want with them, and one option is, always, running people over.
Undoubtedly, the tool is valuable, but it's also a quick way to burn out. Spend a little too much time online and you're in an onslaught of the most dreadful news imaginable, both in your personal life events and with regard to global bloodshed. My brain has evolved to run through a panicked loop any time my phone perks up. Is it bad news from my parents? Is it my doctor telling me that the little bump on my finger is, indeed, finger cancer? (Everyone on Reddit agreed it was finger cancer.) Is it a drone strike, and will it hit someone I love on the other side of the world? Or maybe it'll hit a stranger—is that supposed to make me feel better? Maybe it's just a push alert, showing me photos of men shielding their children from rifles on Father's Day. What do I do about the fact that these men look like my uncles, or that their children look like our children? Even if the bad news is something more mundane, it's still bad news: another rainy weekend in New York after we've already suffered so many rainy weekends in a row. But all of this is just information, and I get to decide what to do with it. My phone, now, feels like a knife: a tool I could use to build something, but one I can always turn inwards and use to destroy myself if I want. It's heavy in my hands and I can't believe I used to dream of one day having unfettered access to this little computer in my pocket. It's a knife! What was I doing getting excited about holding a knife ?
The pandemic offered us a view of a digital-first world, and it actually wasn't that enticing — staying home reminded all of us how much we wanted to be surrounded by other people. Now, all I want is to get offline, and I don't think I'm alone. Last weekend, more than 5 million people attended the 2,000 No Kings protests around the country, despite the rain and threat of police violence. Dating apps are struggling with more and more people trying to meet in person instead of on sexy LinkedIn. People are back outside, at concerts and bars and festivals and shows of a united spirit against the government. The streets are full again, the bounceback to IRL culture that we were waiting for after the pandemic.
We've also learned the hard way that there's no real safety on the internet. As the US government cracks down on student activists and tourists who have posted critically about Israel, it's clear that our digital audiences aren't all that private. We once turned to the internet to help us build our senses of selves, but now, oligarchs and despots are using that data against us. In some ways, we've seen the limits of digital-only protests. Tweet “this is not normal” all you fucking want—it didn't work in 2016 and it's not going to work now. What might work is if you can save a piece of your soul through the brutal and vital work of witnessing carnage, while also preserving yourself for the fight happening just off-screen. It needs you more than the endless scroll ever did.
I don't like being online anymore, but I view it as a duty. I am too comfortable and I live too far from real carnage. I live in a safe place, with a passport that allows me to travel to almost any country I want. The hospital I was born in is still standing, which makes me feel lucky, which then makes me feel terminally sad. My job, now, is to witness that which the internet allows me to see, and to call it what it is: a genocide, a famine, a brazen act of war.
But for now, outside, it's summer. You suffered through a hard winter, and you'll hopefully suffer through several more. The grass is getting longer. New prisons are built every day. I want to stay out of all of them for as long as I can.
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