I Get By with a Little Help from My Internet Friends
A personal history with online communities and connection
1994 (or was it 1995??) : My dad and stepmom bring home that coveted, shiny CD and pop it into the CD-ROM drive of our computer. We connect and hear those scratchy, high-pitched screeches followed by words that remain forever embedded in the brains of most teens and adults in the 90s- “Welcome! You’ve got mail!” I make up a screen name, which will ultimately become the handle I use for almost everything until the mid-aughts, and I start exploring. Every chat room I enter, I see the same question - “A/S/L?” and I realize that I could say literally anything I wanted. These first experiences with online community didn’t feel very connective or communal - for me, as a teenager, it was more an exercise of pretending to be anyone else, trying out harmless little fibs, and interacting with strangers in a disconnected way.
2008: I’m a program coordinator at a (sadly, now defunct) breast cancer non-profit. The non-profit focused on engaging survivors of breast cancer to deliver services such as peer support groups, educational programming, and a fully survivor-staffed help line. We were researching other ways to provide these services to the communities where we worked and one of my colleagues showed me this amazing new thing - Second Life. An online computer game that let you create an avatar and then interact with other users in the environment. It was the perfect opportunity to reach communities that we weren’t present in, to help those who were either immunocompromised or otherwise physically unable to attend in-person support group meetings. I remember creating an avatar and roaming around, simulating a support group meeting. It felt revolutionary.
2016: I’m starting to enter a new phase of my Nerd Era, where I’m embracing my nerdery a little more openly and trying less hard to hide it from others. This also coincides with my deepest dive into fanfiction. I’d dabbled a few times before, happening upon it when trying to look up spoilers for my favorite shows over the years, but somehow, this year, I dive deep and I don’t really ever look back. I start an account with Archive of Our Own (AO3) and search for my favorite pairings from TV shows (starting with FitzSimmons from Marvel’s Agents of SHIELD) and start reading fanfics at every opportunity, especially during breaks in between seasons. I start to develop favorite authors and begin commenting on pieces that I really love. I start having a rapport with other fans and authors and eventually I take the plunge and write my first fanfic myself. This opens up a whole new door to my connections with the fandom as I join writing groups and participate in fun challenges where writers write stories with specific themes or for specific people. I ask some of these writers for feedback on my writing (called being a “beta” or “beta-ing”). Little threads of connection start to form between me and other writers. We start connecting in other forums, like Tumblr, the ultimate gathering place for all fans who want to share in their love and nerdery in a myriad of creative ways. I feel connected to these people in a lovely way - they’re not my go-to people who I reach out for when things are tough, but there is genuine, true connection with these strangers who I will never meet, let alone learn their real names. It will take about 5 more years before I start telling friends that I read or write fanfic, but throughout all of that, I had these random internet strangers to fawn and squee all over the different content that we all loved, and it was lovely.
(Pause to mention that I could probably do a 15-min PowerPoint session with no preparation about the topic of fanfiction and representation and how much people who don’t feel seen or represented in media take it upon themselves to write themselves into the narrative. It’s a beautiful thing. )
The ultimate end cap to this phase: I have two IRL friends who met in these forums. Both huge fans of a TV show and participating in an artistic challenge with one of the online groups, they were paired together to create a piece and connected over it, over thousands of miles of physical distance. And then they fell in love. And then they got married. Beautiful connection, thanks all to the internet!
Now: I’m four months into my job search after being laid off due to the US Government’s heartless cuts to foreign aid. It’s a lonely process, even living in a house with a supportive partner (also looking for work) and even with the sense of camaraderie and community with all of the thousands of other international aid workers who not only lost their jobs, but are witnessing the total decimation of our entire industry. But there are some amazing ways I’ve felt connected to people, and found connection and support, all with strangers from the internet who I’ve never met, and will likely never meet:
Anne Helen Peterson’s Culture Study Job Fair - On her Substack, Anne Helen Peterson started a thread where people who were looking for work or able to help could comment on what they were seeking/offering and others could reach out and start connecting. Through this process, I’ve connected with at least two random people: One of whom is based in Portland and will be a great networking connection to have, and another who saw that I had my own Substack and wanted to learn more about it as she considers how to build her online presence. Even just witnessing the conversations in the comments was heartening and uplifting - people connecting with each other, over the internet, thanks to a shared interest in the Culture Study Substack, ready to support each other.
Speaking of Substack, Career Pivot rose out of the ashes of the foreign aid cuts. Created by Wayan Vota, someone who lost their job due to the cuts and was looking to connect with others, it’s now taken on a life of its own, even as many of the original participants, including Wayan, have started to find work. Here, people share their experiences, engage in conversations about job searching, share resources, and commiserate together over all of the difficulties our industry is facing. It’s a lovely example of people connecting over a shared interest online and really showing up for each other in big ways.
The Bloom - An online community for social and environmental impact professionals. I came across this from a LinkedIn post, drawn to the free subscription The Bloom was offering to those impacted by the foreign aid cuts, and checked it out. It’s almost like it’s own Slack channel, or Discord server, where there are different channels that members can enter and chat in, providing specific insights, thoughts, promotions, ideas, and requests for support based on what they’re looking for. They also offer free webinars and trainings to help all of the job hunters out there or just those who want to learn a little more. From this community, I’ve met one very cool Portlander working in the sustainable textiles industry and am now participating in a Job Search Council to be a support group with a cohort of peers to help each other through our job search.
Most importantly, the beauty of WhatsApp - for those who don’t travel outside the US and generally only talk to friends and family here, this may be foreign, but to anyone who travels internationally or has important people or friends outside of the US, it’s a lifeline. An elevated messaging app, it allows people to easily text each other over the internet/WiFi instead of using your mobile phone network. Priceless. Over the past few months, a lot of WhatsApp chat groups have popped up amongst my fellow colleagues who are also either job searching or just navigating the difficulty of watching your industry crumble. These are more than internet strangers, but given that we are all flung all over the globe, the internet is more than necessary for us to not just stay connected but to truly support each other, sending notes of support, links to jobs, sharing resources, etc.
There’s no way that I could have ever imagined way back in 1994 (95?? it’s all a blur…) the role the internet would play in my connections with others. From those auspicious beginnings talking with strangers on AOL and making up fake personas, I could have never guessed that I would create genuine, important, life sustaining connections with internet strangers. We could spend days and days talking about the shadow side of all of this - the vitriol that comes with the protection of online anonymity, the rise in fake news, the ways that learning and knowledge have been challenged, the ease of which hate groups and extremists can recruit more people to their causes… But the internet still gives us good things too, and I’m not just talking about hilarious memes and adorable animals. It allows us to connect, not only with our important IRL people, but with so many others around the world, and that connection, as random and sometimes still anonymous as it might be, is still important, now more than ever.
The internet has opened up a world of information never seen before. I could have never imagined it even 30 years ago. And as you refer to it above, so many of us have been given the opportunity to stay connected to people we may have lost touch with years ago. But as in all things both informational and in connecting and establishing relationships with those you have never met with, due diligence and a healthy dose of caution must also be constantly observed. And now with AI, even more so.