As a minor, using the Internet I was not allowed to…

· give people my full name (this eventually became just my full last name, but not for awhile)
· reveal anything about my location
· accept anything in the mail from anyone that I didn’t know in person, so I couldn’t have pen pals
· give anyone that I did not know in person my phone number, not even my own cell number
· call anyone that I did not know in person
· meet up with anyone that I did not know in person

My mother was more than happy to let the Internet “babysit” me so that she didn’t have to do it herself, or engage with me herself though. (This has been common knowledge for a long time and explains many of the disparities that I had in Internet rules growing up. Almost all of them, in fact.) But it seemed like the one thing that both of my parents agreed on, which I have mixed opinions on, were that my Internet friends were “not real friends” and were “less” friends to me than my real-life friends. Living where I do, and living where I continue to live, this seems to be a mindset that a lot of people I know have… but I’ve made it a point to separate my real life from my “Internet life” for years and have functionally been doing so for more than a decade now, mainly because of the people that I know in real life. I think this says more about the people that I know in real life than it does most of the people that I know online. For the most part, I hate this place.

In case some people have been under the impression that I might have changed my mind over the decades, or that “the right person” or “the right people” might make me change my mind on the matter: it’s as resolute as ever, and I’m as stubborn as ever. It doesn’t matter that it’s nearly 2022 and “nearly everyone is doing it”. I continue not to make it a point to meet up with people from the Internet because it’s not something that I am comfortable with, although I might make exceptions for certain people that I have known for more than a decade that I can count on one hand… at a later time in my life. Conventions like TwitchCon and VidCon — and yes, I mean actual conventions — might also be other exceptions once the pandemic is well and truly over, but a lot of that stems from my trust of how Twitch runs the majority of the services that they provide to people and the good things that I’ve continued to hear about VidCon, my refusal to attend a convention in the midst of any semblance of an active pandemic notwithstanding. If I don’t have to meet up with someone from the Internet in person — I mean, food and transportation services can be useful — it’s not something that I want to do right now. I exercise a lot of caution in that regard, and it’s something that I am not exceedingly comfortable with. (And of course, by that I mean “people who are not at all local to my own”.)

Growing up, the really good thing about my Internet usage was the limits that were placed on it that remained consistent — as a child, I was not allowed to give my full name to my friends at any point, and of those former “friends” who maliciously attempted to exploit real-life friends of mine to try to trick them into giving them more information on me than they were allowed to have, I was no longer permitted to speak to. As a minor, I wasn’t allowed to meet any Internet friends, and as long as the whole minor thing applied I wasn’t allowed to call them either. These were just things I knew better than to ask permission for. I feel like my parents took Internet safety as seriously as they should have and set age-appropriate limits for it, and that molded me into someone who became a lot more cautious about what I expected out of the Internet, even as an adult who was free to make my own decisions (and perhaps even parent differently there, too).

I may get into the “parenting decisions relating to the Internet” thing later to give that more space of its own.

Compared to my real-life peers and school friends, though, I was generally allowed to do less on the Internet while I was growing up. And like I’ve said, it’s not something that I’m frustrated about, mad about, or regret. I didn’t begin making friends online in abundance until I was an adult due to that, though (not even as an adolescent). Although I had friends online growing up, my interactions with them were generally curtailed.

I’ve left Discord servers that I wasn’t participating in and, in some recent cases, no longer want to be a part of the community that members “are” a part of… for the second time, and I’m hoping that it’s the last time.

Instead of getting direct messages about it asking me to come back to at least one of the servers in question, telling me that “more admins have been brought on” (which still isn’t going to solve the problem that this server has of taking away problematic people’s permissions as they violate rules, just to give all of them right back, and either to refuse to kick or ban people that should be kicked or banned or to undo another mod’s kick or ban when one has actually done that and… get mad that they did it) and “that people will be given protective roles”… let me limit the number of servers that I’m a member of in peace. When I’ve tried to do this in the past I get people telling me how their server is better, or different, wanting me to join their server… and so far, that hasn’t been my experience with almost all of the servers in this friends’ group. (AOL alumni? Hackers and programmers? Sometimes both?) Like, please leave me alone for longer than two weeks here.

Ideally, don’t invite me back. I like not being a part of them already and it’s only been like thirteen hours…