in an online first, i asked a friend about the significance of doing it online first:

s - we both grew up very online which is something we bonded over when we first met. so inevitably, a lot of our important life events happened online. my question is: what is better online before irl? vice versa, which things are better to experience irl before online? for example, this is embarrassing but i confessed to my first crush on facebook messenger...

c - oh no <laughing>. i can tell you definitely not that.

s - ...before telling them face-to-face. and then you know porn and stuff like that obviously. but say you had a kid, how would you guide them on what experiences to save for each format? especially as digital experiences become more and more real—hologram conferencing, virtual reality, generative AI, they can print scents now, all this tech that's basically here already—i think that ability to self-determine the correct order across many situations would be an increasingly important skill, right?

c - oh yeah, probably. but i think nothing is better online first.

s - no. nothing?!

c - oh yeah. people are not distinguishing between what behavior makes sense online and what's appropriate in person because they are too online. you know, people saying chat in real life like there's a literal chat there. people being weird and parasocial. i feel like for a lot of the situations were you can experience something online or irl, they are too different. you can't directly conflate them. that's why experiencing it in real life is always going to give you a more direct experience and be a better teacher.

like dating online. like, incels and that the kind of rejection you get online... it doesn't stick. no self-reflection. with dating apps, it doesn't trigger any sort of self-reflection. it's just spamming swipes.

s - but that's a form of resilience!

c - resilience only matters if you keep going until you hit upon a success. up to that point, it's pointless.

s - but don't you think being online acts as a really safe way of testing out what works? there's that distance between the experience and immediate threat that de-risks whatever you are doing. i also think americans are generally ass at giving and receiving constructive feedback without getting defensive or being too positive. sometimes, i would rather share stuff i've worked on online to a bigger audience who i feel are going to be unfiltered about it or just ignore it because they are anonymous. for example, when i was 10, i shared my myspace on a rate-my-page forum and someone told me it was "way too defaultish" so i learned html. that was important to me.

c - agree about distance and americans but as someone who makes and shares music online, i would much rather get feedback from someone in person than "kys", "bro, stop making trash". i go directly to get the opinions of people i trust. i agree though that for dating that safety from physical threat is really good in the early stages but that distance empowers people to say wild shit online that under no other circumstances would they say to your face. the threat is good too.

s - i've been listening a lot to the new ninajirachi album where there is a song about her seeing a video of a headless body online when she's young. i very distinctly remember something similar and i know you have too, whatever, on the internet but it made me think about how that kind of unexpected stuff and educational content i saw during my program prepared me for seeing that in real life. i was pleasantly suprised i didn't pass out but also suspicious of how calm i was, you know? <laughing> i was distanced enough to coach myself into a right response which is something i think the internet provides especially well. i know how much you hate getting spoiled by the internet, but in this case it was probably good for me.

c - <goes on a long rant about spoilers on the internet>

c - that's actually another thing i hate—my mom will look up videos of people walking through a city for where she is going on vacation. i tell everyone, "don't let me know anything, i want to find it out when i get there. we'll do it live".

so that same blunting effect in a negative sense. what if i saw the Eiffel tower irl first and wanted to be an architect? what if i had never seen a hot person and then saw a 10 at the grocery store? you know how much more motivated i would be?

s - sure.

c - you know what they did for Helen of Troy? my man was horny. no one getting that down bad anymore.

we did not agree on a list of experiences which were better online first.

i attribute it to how differently we use the internet. c is someone who projects themself extremely well in real life, someone who accidentally makes friends going to the store. i know for a fact c has spent less time navel-gazing about their identity than i have. to c, every spoiler is an act of theft. save the good stuff, dodge the bad stuff. keep your palate clean.

consumptively, i don't use the internet in such a directed way. to me, the internet has always felt expansive. so i walked away from this talk feeling like we had mischaracterized online experiences. it's not all simulation. what happens online is not fake.

expansive, sure, yet i have been extremely intentional about where i interact online. i stopped posting on forums. i've never used online dating. being happy or sad about engagement makes me feel pathetic.

my biggest changes came either through deliberate overwhelming or inundation—seeking out tons of new experiences—or through intentional contraction into solitude and reflection. disappointingly, most of these major pushes, efforts to change, were met by a collective shrug from the people i knew.

so when i decided i wanted more self-possession, i wanted to dress differently, i wanted to start sharing things i made—i started online first.

i haven't told c about river.