On Old Facebook Statuses
My generation is in a weird place, and we always will be. I talked a bit about this a while back but that was through one specific lens, travel. Today I wanna dive into it in a very different context: social media.
Being a Millennial and specifically an early 90s one means that all of my memories before the widespread adoption of the internet are kinda hazy. Once you play me that awful dialup sound or show me an America-On-Line disc, though, you might as well have put me in a time machine because it takes me straight back to my childhood. So, while I could talk about how funny the anti-piracy ads were (“You wouldn’t download a car, would you?!” fuck yeah I would dude, are you kidding me?) or how grave the conversations my parents had with me about online chat rooms and getting kidnapped were…I’m thinking about one aspect of my generation’s childhoods specifically: the most painful, most horrible, most cringeworthy part… old Facebook statuses.
Let’s get this part out of the way first: undoubtedly, you’ve all read stories of famous (or infamous, I guess) individuals who have horrific old social media posts discovered. These posts usually contain offensive language and terrible slurs, outdated humor and stereotypes… just bad shit all around. This isn’t what I’m talking about… I’m talking about statuses like, “Homework SUCKS” or “Real eyes realize real lies…” you know, the things of nightmares.
There’s something truly terrifying about being reminded of what a dumb little shit you were. Seeing yourself complain about being tired at 13 years old just makes my blood boil. My dude, you’re 13, you only have to go to school for like 6 hours a day, and then someone makes dinner for you! Just wait until you work a 14-hour shift and then realize you have no food in your fridge so you just eat chips and then fall asleep because you have to wake up for work tomorrow…oh god, I’m a “back in my day we had to walk 15 miles to school through the snow, up hill both ways” old geezer!
But in all seriousness, it is hysterical to see all of the quotes I used to think were profound, the lyrics I thought were deep, the thoughts I felt were worth preserving on the internet for all of humanity to consume until the eventual heat death of the universe.
Someone once told me, though, finding your past self cringy is a blessing because it means you are no longer cringy in the same way. I find that oddly comforting while perusing old statuses in which I proclaimed “Never Back Down” was “the sickest movie I’ve ever seen” or postulated on my 15-year-old misguided ideas of what made a man a “man”.
I might have had a bunch of dumbass opinions when I was younger, I might have a bunch of dumbass opinions now, but I take solace in the fact that at least they’re different dumbass opinions.
What’s the worst old status of yours that you’ve found?
Haha the fact that I thought dialup was a misspelling of dua lipa makes me feel less old.
This post makes me very happy that I deleted my old Facebook! I used to say a lot of annoying things like “delight in the day” and “follow the sun”
Will that was a laugh-out-loud post. (You will notice I did not write the capital letters for laugh-out-loud because then I would look back at that and find it cringe-worthy.) And just saying, I still look back at things I said a decade ago and , yes, cringe; and you do not want to know what I thought and wrote in the 195os. Keep the great observations coming and don't forget to tip your waiter. argh....cringe-worthy!