I had the cruelest dream.
It’s 1999. Saturday morning. Sun’s slicing through the blinds like it’s got nowhere better to be.
I roll out of bed, boxers half mast, hair looking like I lost a fight with a lawnmower.
Stumble to the kitchen, pour a bowl of Frosties so big it’s basically a helmet.
Milk sloshes over the edge because who gives a shit, it’s Saturday.
Back to my room. Obviously the sacred cave for your average teenager.
Computer’s already humming.
Hit the power button on the monitor, crackle crackle, then the glorious screech of dial up.
That modem sound? Pure fucking dopamine. 56k of screaming plastic angels singing me into the promised land.
While it connects I’m shovelling cereal, milk dripping down my chin like a savage.
Finally it connected.
Straight to Blogspot.
My little corner of the internet that exactly twelve weirdos read. There’s three new comments on last night’s post about how Radiohead’s new album is going to ruin music forever (I was wrong, sue me)
One from some dude in Ohio who said Ok Computer actually saved his life and Kid A will be amazing when it comes out.
One from a girl in Sweden who just wrote “lol same.”
One from my friend Mike calling me an asshole.
I reply to all of them. Actual conversation. No likes, no ratios, no subtweets…
Just words, back and forth, like passing notes in class but the classroom is the whole planet.
I hammer out a quick post…
Something stupid about how I’m convinced the Millennium Bug is real and we’re all going to die listening to Vengaboys or some stupid shit.
Hit publish. Log off.
And in that moment I remember that he internet doesn’t own me.
It’s a place I visit, not a fucking live in.
Then I’m out the door. Meeting the friends at the record shop.
We’re gonna blow our paper round money on imported singles and lie to each other about how many cigarettes we’ve smoked.
Life is small, slow, beautiful. Tactile. Real.
And then I wake up.
It’s 2025.
Phone’s already in my hand before my eyes are open. Notifications stacked like Jenga blocks made of pure spite, anxiety and rage.
Elon’s ratioing someone.
Another crypto thing died.
Someone I went to school with is now a tradwife influencer selling $79 candles that smell like “masculine discipline.”
The UK’s on fire, again.
America’s on fire… still lol.
My neck hurts from scrolling in bed. My attention span is a chewed up piece of gum.
I haven’t spoken to another human in real life without a screen between us in… fuck, I can’t even remember.
We had it. We actually fucking had it.
A version of the internet that was playgrounds and treehouses and secret notes, not this endless scrolling trench warfare.
We built the walls ourselves, brick by brick, like by like, outrage by outrage. We handed over our souls for dopamine hits while being lie that it’s also connection.
And now we live in the sludge.
Everything’s too loud, too fast, too fake.
Everyone’s performing. Everyone’s exhausted. Everyone’s lonely as hell in a crowd of ten thousand followers.
I miss the screech of that modem. I miss waiting. I miss logging off.
I miss when the internet was a place you went, not a place that went inside you and set up fucking camp.
What the hell did we do?
Why did we let them turn paradise into this screaming landfill?
I just want to go back to sleep and never wake up in this timeline again.
Cause before we know it. We’ll be stuck inside while everything is automated for us. I mean they’re already automating people’s thoughts…
Stephen Walker.
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Stephen Walker, Unit 146317, PO Box 7169, Poole, BH15 9EL, United Kingdom