Arashi Young
arashiyoung.bsky.social
Arashi Young
@arashiyoung.bsky.social
Artist, thinker, dreamer, do-er... navigating life on a blue spitball hurling through the universe.
oooh, what are you coaching?
January 22, 2025 at 8:33 PM
It's really sad, because there is a certain ratio of advertisement and engagement that is tolerable, like background radiation. But that's never enough, is it?
January 21, 2025 at 8:12 AM
24/24

Like AOL, AIM, ICQ, Myspace, Livejournal, OKCupid, Tribe.net, Pinterest, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, and many, many, many others, there too will be life after Meta.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
23/24

But reality is more nuanced than that. I’ll probably keep my thumb on a few digital worlds, while working to detach myself from the dopamine-hunting scrolling.

This may be the only thread I ever write here, and that’s ok. My words are only future digital debris anyway.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
22/24

There are times I want to erase my whole digital world. Close down to my ten friends who mean the world to me and cut loose what’s left of two decades of digital bonds.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
21/24

Side note: what happens when Facebook is nothing but bots and death announcements at the end of one’s digital and corporeal life?

And why do I keep going back to read the last things she wrote when I miss her.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
20/24

With enshittification, excessive advertisements, propaganda, and bot activity, these online relationships are held hostage beyond a gate of trash.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
19/24

So what happened? I think about all the digital spaces I left before I even got to Facebook, and they were easier to leave. They held a use and when that use ceased, I left.

But with Facebook, Instagram and X, they got so big, they redefined the digital square within their backyard.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
18/24

And for a long time there, it was really, really nice. It actually was. You could keep in touch with people across the world, share their joys and sorrows. It was both expansive and yet hyper-local with events in your backyard.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
17/24

Facebook was one of the first places that tried to bring it all together. I had the friends I had met from AIM, people I knew from livejournal, people from burningman, people from my favorite coffee shop, people from school if they could keep up with my name/identity changes.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
16/24

I think I would give a lot of sites two years and then erase my digital presence. When I joined LinkedIn, I archived and wiped my livejournal.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
15/24

Somewhere in this era was the rise of lifestyle social media in my life, the interest specific forums for alternative lifestyles or the Burning Man social network and tumblr and pinterest, and stumble upon, etc. This was probably the beginning of my burnout of digital spaces.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
14/24

The OKC journal community never felt like randos (even though we were) because everyone was within three associates of someone who had actually met that person. Like we were all second cousins, which now sounds weird because I met my husband through that group.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
13/24

Some of the relationships were romantic, some were friendships, some frenemies, some enemies. The OKC journal network included all kinds. What was neat was that we would meet up which became a kind of social verification system.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
12/24

OkCupid Journals. There was a fabulous community that existed on OkCupid through the journals. People would socially follow each other’s journals like in Livejournal, but since it was OKC, there was an added layer of wanting to take relationships irl.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
11/24

OkCupid. I swear I joined for the quizzes. In ancient internet times, there was a pipeline between Livejournal and OkCupid where people would do with personality tests on OkCupid and then share their results on Livejournal.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
10/24

But a few people responded to my authenticity and I will always cherish their kindness.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
9/24

I shared art, I shared hot takes, I shared my process dealing with my first chronic pain condition. I shared excruciating detail of a relationship that held together by shreds. I sometimes look back and can’t believe I shared that much.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
8/24

Livejournal. For a hot minute there, I put my whole life into livejournal, spilling out digital reems of dispatches. It kickstarted my love for the personal essay. I had 2 accounts, one very personal, one extremely personal. Both were more raw than I would ever be again.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
7/24

I made a myspace account, but never invested in it. I found the skins and flourishes distracting. Maybe it was envy of the emo kids and how brightly they seemed to adorn themselves. I just couldn’t get into it.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM
6/24

I played around on Limewire and ICQ in college. One of these crashed my computer, the other crashed my belief in humanity.
January 19, 2025 at 10:34 PM