by Abi Whelan
Welcome to the Internet! I think Bo Burnham puts it best when he asked if he could “interest you in everything all of the time?” Since its inception in 1969, the internet has boomed and become a place of increasingly divided communities. But it wasn’t always like this. Think back to just a few years ago. Let me set the scene – the burning hellscape of Tumblr, circa 2016. A new episode of Sherlock has been released, Superwholock is everywhere, Dashcon was only two years ago and Penis Friday is (thankfully) no more. The ship ‘wars’ are in full swing, and that textpost about ‘fandom vs. hipster’ blogs forming an alliance in a coffee shop pops up on your dash at least once a week. In my mind, nowhere is more of an online community than Tumblr in the early 2010s. Sure, it was a lawless land – especially before the introduction of safe browsing – but once you found your community you were home. At least, in a chronically online, stealing shoelaces from the president kind of way. It certainly was a place to be. Whether you shipped Johnlock or Phan, you had found yourself a community of likeminded people, who watched the same things as you, laughed over the same jokes, and cried when the show was really really bad (I’m looking at you and Superhell, Supernatural).
G-YOU MAGAZINE// SEPTEMBER 2021// 24
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In the age of the Internet, where is home?
