I absolutely blame Facebook for this shift. Words cannot describe how freaking WEIRD it was in the mid-00s when there was suddenly this popular website where you were required to use your real, brickspace name and encouraged to post photos of yourself. Every single bit of Standard Internet Safety prior to then said that you should never ever ever do either of those.
omg 2005/2006. When all our parents, who had been telling us for YEARS to never use our real names on the internet, suddenly all got facebook accounts and started using their real names on the internet like it was totally normal. Complete mental whiplash. Before then, it was WEIRD to use your real name on the internet. Like, people who did that were weirdos.
[Image Description: initial tweet by Mini Modu, @ MinModulation, that says "The idea of the internet as a third space for co-identities, 'avatars', 'pseudonyms', doesn't really exist for normies. They love selfies and I.Ds--the net is purely a marketing platform for their Face, like the mall. They lo..." the tweet gets cut off as it's retweeted by SuRge, @ SRG_Works, who adds "The fact that normies never embraced the idea that the 'net was a great place to have 'alter egos' and just be free from insane societal pressure really is wild. Instead they used the Internet to double down and make it for non-conformists to escape." End I.D]
It really is difficult to describe how bizarre that felt, isn't it?
Like imagine you spend most if not all of your childhood hearing "don't feed the bears" and all the reasons why that's a terrible idea. So okay you agree, while life might sometimes present the temptation to feed some bears it's a bad idea and you'll never do it. Still plenty of ways to enjoy nature, after all!
Then one morning you wake up and all the adults and organizations who spent so much time and energy on hammering home that you never, ever, ever feed the bears, are enthusing over this new Bear Feeding Park! Where all you do all day long is go feed bears! And absolutely you must get to the Bear Feeding Park and start hanging out there and throwing parties there and feeding bears, making sure all the important milestones of your life or even just mundane things feature, to some extent, a visit to Bear Feeding Park. Where you feed bears.
And you're like... well, if nothing else, is it somehow less dangerous to feed bears now? The answer to which is no. Not at all. Bear attacks skyrocket to an all-time high and stay there. Somehow this does not actually seem to deter anyone. You suggest that maybe this is a sign that Bear Feeding Park is a bad idea and people are like, oh no, we just need to find other ways to stay Bear Aware. We can't give up going to Bear Feeding Park, after all! You can't get hired unless you've got a good reputation at Bear Feeding Park!
Yeah I'm still not over it. What in the good goddamn fuck, actually.
