the internet is wonky again

my favorite profiles and content right now, newsletters that feel like love letters, and clicking "post" again

Despite the common narrative that Instagram is dead, your TikTok feed is getting boring, and every other cis white guy is starting a newsletter and a podcast, the ruins of social media as we know it might be the start of some of the most exciting times to be online. Think of it as going thrifting. Actually thrifting, not paying $40 for a shirt at a curated vintage boutique. It’s definitely not everyone’s cup of tea and it requires digging through piles and piles of rags, dirty clothes and all kinds of weird to find a couple of treasures. But when you find something? The compliments and the need to tell the whole world “i thrifted it!” and “it was $10!” have given me a better high than buying anything off the rack, no matter how nice it is. 

My favorite type of content right now are carousels of stills on IG. A format that was run into the ground by girlbosses in 2018 and political activists in 2020 is being resurrected and turned into an art form by the latest wave of the photo dump. It’s not just a semi-ugly selfie that looks kind of cute coupled with a pic of your meal and scenery shot anymore. A good IG carousel tells a story. If you are a single girl out on a solo trip in Europe, I need to see your tan lines, a text to a friend at the inevitable low point of the trip, and a hot outfit you put together when you were feeling confident but then ultimately switched the heels for a more comfortable shoe. If you are a fashion blogger, show me a rare ebay find, ashes from a cigarette you smoked as an accessory and a picture of the notes app on the dirty screen of your laptop. The slimier, the better. On the brand side, I am obsessed with profiles that feel raw, unexpected and more editorial than commercial. I am poking around some brand profiles as if I am flipping through pages of a magazine looking to feel surprised and inspired, saving carousels instead of clipping pages. 

I’ve also been reading newsletters. Groundbreaking, I know. Couple of years ago I volunteered to beta test a newsletter reading app because I was collecting Substack subscriptions like infinity stones but let most of them pile up unopened in my inbox. Turns out the best way to get me to read a newsletter is to write a good newsletter and make me pay for it. The feeds have been serving such low-quality content that it no longer feels stimulating enough to keep scrolling. Good newsletters feel like love letters (thinking about Packy McCormick sending out Not Boring to a bunch of dudes in tech while I make this comparison just for fun). They feel like that text from a friend that’s just your name in all capital letters followed by “OMG”. They are like a secret society letter sliding under your door. They bring you back to the time when we sent emails to friends and lovers instead of texts (I wasn’t around back then but seeing that’s something Carrie Bradshaw still does to this day, I am assuming this is a thing). The more analogue, the better. Some of the most interesting, coveted and helpful newsletters arrive in your inbox only and take payments via venmo.

I haven’t felt so inspired and excited to be online in a long time. When I stopped doing social media for a living about a year ago, it was such a relief. I no longer had to follow the tech people I had to follow for my job. I no longer had to care about conversations they were having. When I noticed any kind of discourse happening online, I would just quit the Twitter app instead of thinking about a fun riff off I could do to participate in it for the engagement. Logging on and scrolling through the feed was something that became a habit but most of the time surfaced content that made me feel terrible. There were times when I was reminiscing about what being online was like 2-3 years ago, the connections I made along the way, and the projects I got to work on.

I’ve spent the last couple of months in the rabbit holes of Instagram and TikTok, digging further than my fyp and explore tab, filtering through hundreds and hundreds of profiles. If I liked one account, I would look at who they follow, untangling a whole bunch of new creators before they become more or less mainstream. Uncovering all these hidden treasures of the internet brought me back to even deeper nostalgia and even fonder memories of reading travel and fashion blogs in 2014, chatting in Facebook groups, making my first email, and cutting clothes and models out of my mom’s magazines.

The internet may be broken and wonky right now but I am giddy to explore it and see what comes out of making stuff and clicking “post” again.