The Web Remembers
Written: 1/27/2024
Published: 1/28/2024
Mood: Nostalgic
Listening to: Calm Nintendo Games Music to Finish the Day
Playing: Palia Open Beta
Current Temperature: 72F/22.2C
It completely passed me by, but my tumblr, one of the oldest online spaces I've consistently curated, recently celebrated its 12th anniversary (or at least it did if you believe that your first post is an indication of an active space, which I certainly do). It's kind of a little baffling to think of anything lasting that long online, especially these days, where platforms and content seem to have the shelf life of milk if you leave it out on the counter for like a day (do not do that.)
So, for a lark, I decided to go back through some of my old archives on tumblr, all the way back to the beginning, and what I found sort of surprised me, for one, I didn't realise just how fucking awful I was 12 years ago, at the start of the blog (there's a lot of language there that I ABSOLUTELY would not use today, as I was still somewhat coming off my Shitty 4Chan Teen Era.) But it's also pretty interesting to see how I was dealing with the realities of life at various stages in my life. How was I dealing with things when my Dad died? What was I thinking about when I got my first job? Did getting my degree even have an effect on what I was posting? What was I doing during the COVID Pandemic?
Full disclosure, I honestly can't remember these things myself, but I did document them. More importantly, I PRESERVED those documents, no matter how cringe or embarrassing they might make me now. That's data, that's information, that's history. I can go back to it at any time (Hosting permitting) and be an archaeologist of my own brain. That's kind of an incredible thing to me, but I'm not just being an archaeologist of my own brain, but of other people's brains as well. Everything that gets reblogged is saved in that archive (unless, again, tumblr decides to remove it for community guidelines, which has happened, again when dealing with history there's always gonna be gaps). I think really the only thing that comes close to documentation on that scale is probably my inventory on Second Life, and that's ONLY because it pre-dates that blog by 6 years. I kinda don't want to look at the numbers because I'll probably have a heart attack.
Anyway this is a lot of words to say there's also something I've noticed while going through a bunch of those old posts. As much as things have changed it the 12 years since I started that tumblr, there's a core that sort of stays the same. I haven't really taken the time to do an in depth analysis of it, but it's definitely there. I think Undertale probably said it best: "Despite everything, it's still you."
I wanted to write something cool and metaphorical about how the remnants of our online presence can be like cicada shells, a trace of the old you left behind as you grow and change, but it didn't feel right. I also thought the metamorphosis of a butterfly would be apt, but not all changes are so drastic, even if they do leave behind a cocoon as evidence of transformation. Then I realized that probably the analogy I wanted to make is when birds molt their feathers.
Hear me out on this one. I have a point to make. Feathers are one of the defining characteristics of a bird, and when they stop growing, they start the inevitable process of wearing down. Because of this, those feathers need to be replaced from time to time. Sometimes the process of replacing the feathers results in drastic change, like going from juvenile plumage to adult plumage, or changing plumage according to the season. You might think you're looking at two completely different birds at different times in their life, but they're still the same bird. Other times there's not much difference in a molt, and the plumage is the same as it was before, only brighter , sturdier, and able to serve the bird better. Nevertheless, regardless of how a bird molts, it always leaves behind its old feathers. While those old feathers may not give you a complete understanding of what that bird was doing at the time they molted them, it does give you a pretty decent idea. And the feathers will last long after the the bird has gone too (seriously, there's whole collections in natural history museums dedicated to bird feathers).
The point I'm trying to make is that even if my feathers are different, fundamentally I'm still a bird. Metaphorically speaking. I'm not actually a bird, could you imagine though?
So I think I'm going to try to keep my tumblr up for as long as I can, a virtual museum to showcase my digital bird feathers from my digital molts. A living museum too, since I still kind of use it. Of course it goes without saying I'll be archiving this site and blog as well regularly. I mean, it's only really been archived 6 times by the Wayback Machine, and now that it's a more living, breathing space, I'll probably be doing myself a favor ten years from now when I decide to go back and see what I was up to. It's kind of like what I learned while I was learning to code: Always document your stuff to make it easier for the next person who maintains it.
I guess that's as good of a wrapping up point as any. Maybe one day I'll end up writing something profound about this ramble, but who knows! The past may be set in stone, but the future's still waiting to be born.
Quote of the Day: "One is always at home in one's past." - Vladimir Nabokov