on the internet, i can be whoever i want. and what a way to be.

as a kid, i enjoyed multiple rebirths on various websites, constantly reinventing myself through fake introductions. there was never any goal and i don’t think i ever directly hurt anyone doing this. at least, i hope not.

i just liked making up names and nicknames for all these versions of me, coexisting on different corners of the internet.

i don’t know why this came to be, just that it was a habit that stuck around for years. and it’s not like the real me didn’t exist on the internet. sometimes, i kept everything about me except my name. other times, it was my age that changed, mostly feigning older numbers to bypass website requirements, but who doesn’t do this?

later on, when i wad actually at these older numbers and don’t need to lie about my age, it’s my name that i lied about. i don’t know why. i just don’t like to be known as me. at least, not on the internet.

(also, the internet today is not the internet it once was, many years ago, when i made up names by shuffling the letters of my real ones) (but that’s for a different post)

recently, like late last year, i got rid of most of these fake identities and fake mes. i don’t know why. i came back to my old, unused twitter account that used my real name and my real face and my real age.

my excuse, partly, was that i had grown tired of the need to curate myself online. like choosing and picking out things to highlight and show to people. both people i know and people i only chance upon online. i wanted, for once, to just be me.

or really: to just be.

on the internet.

i stopped spending more than a second thinking of my internet actions, like choosing a profile picture or choosing what to tweet. even this, right now, as i type, isn’t being thought about much.

i just wanted to talk about all these years i spent making up versions of me and ideal mes and unideal mes on different places of the internet. and how it was my way of curating myself and how i wanted to be seen. and how i stopped wanting that.

(the longest time i take these days is for making passwords, but that’s just being smart and safe, right?)

i just don’t want to think about how i am on the internet anymore. editing pictures for instagram, choosing what pictures even deserve the editing, choosing what i want to say or post. and how i want to say these things. or when i want to say them. no more curation.

just being.