I’ve tried to tell them so many times that I have been in EXACTLY that position, and it is a horrible feeling.



I’m just so, SO grateful that social media really wasn’t a thing yet when I was a teen (we had email, chat rooms, and Yahoo Groups, and that was pretty much it). You really didn’t have communication with people you actually interacted with at school beyond face-to-face, since Facebook didn’t launch until three years after I graduated, and Livejournal was still in its infancy (even cell phones weren’t particularly common among teens in the late 90′s/early 2000′s). There honestly just weren’t large, popular places to go online–just little niche groups here and there (incidentally, this also accounts for why people think that things like fandom porn are some kind of “new” occurrence. People just didn’t have places they could host it for free without risking violating some site’s Terms of Service. Then suddenly, tumblr, boorus, image boards, and Paheal happen, and you don’t think people are gonna take advantage of that?? It was much harder to hide and share the “pr0nz” back then).



These kids don’t realize that things have changed, and that what you post online can’t just disappear as easily as it could years ago. If you embarrass yourself online nowadays, it’s probably going to haunt you for years. It’s going to go viral, and before you know it, you’ve attracted the eyes of millions of total strangers all viewing you as more a potential meme than a person.

But no, people like me couldn’t possibly know what we’re talking about. It’s not like we were officially the first “kids on the internet”, right? It’s not like we’ve literally grown and adapted alongside the technology itself, right?

I know very well that when you’re young, you think you know EVERYTHING, but that’s the key word: Think. It isn’t until much too late that you realize that you really didn’t know a goddamn thing. This, too, is literally part of being a teenager. Teens in the 50′s–when the word “teenager” was first invented–felt exactly the same way. EVERY generation does (mind you, becoming more progressive than the previous generation still doesn’t mean you know it all). Despite appreciating how my folks allowed me to be myself (my mom took me to get my nose pierced at 16, and allowed me to leave the house in…some highly questionable garments), I thought I had the whole world figured out. I thought I knew how the government should be run, how to “solve” the world’s problems–the whole nine yards.

I do not talk from the perspective of some withered, elderly conservative seeing the world in 1950′s nostalgia-vision. I was raised on MTV, heavy metal, splattery horror movies, and the pure, beautiful fuckery known as 80′s cartoons. I talk from the perspective of once being ALMOST EXACTLY THE SAME KIND OF PERSON AS MANY OF THE CURRENT TEENS ON TUMBLR. I was the bitchy “goth” teenager with pounds of black eyeliner, and pink, red, purple, or blue streaks in my black-dyed hair, wrists and fingers adorned in all manner of spiked jewelry and ironic cross necklaces, insisting that I was “not like other girls”, and becoming outraged at guys staring at my top-heavy rack, despite the fact that I frequently–intentionally–wore tight-fitting tops. My group of friends (i.e. “weird Drama club and French club kids in baggy pants shopping at Hot Topic and listening to Kitty and Orgy) resented the “preps” (which, I believe the modern tumblr equivalency would be something along the lines of “heteronormative cishets” or “basic white bitches”, or something similarly colorful). They have no idea just how much I absolutely understand EXACTLY where they’re coming from. But then, that’s just not plausible in their eyes, because clearly, I couldn’t have possibly thought that way before if I don’t still think that way now. They think that they are at the apex of intellectual, progressive thinking, human understanding, and morality, and that their views don’t need to change. That is the most reliable recipe for a teenager that is going to potentially embarrass themselves profoundly, and all in a digital environment where it can all too easily permeate through millions of reblogs, reposts, and retweets to become a staple of internet mockery.

I can’t say I want to see them humiliated. I know how frustrating it can be to deal with them, but in the end…they just want to belong to something, and they just want to feel important. They want to feel grown up, but even as a teen, you’re not quite an adult yet–at least, not mentally. If I may be brutally honest to my own face, I don’t think I even became an “adult” until my mid 20′s. They just can’t see that the way they’re currently behaving–the way they are going about this goal–is more likely going to land them in some Internet Meme Hall of Shame, and not at the Nobel Peace Prize awards ceremony.

A dumbass teenager doesn’t just become “an adult”. They become a dumbass adult (I’m not about to claim that I’m not still somewhere in this category). Then, gradually, through life experience and self-reflection, they slowly become less of a dumbass (well…maybe not all of them). That’s literally what getting older and “growing up” is all about. It’s about realizing that you’re not as significant as you thought you were–nor as savvy as you thought you were–coming to terms with it, and accepting yourself for who you’ve become. Maybe–just maybe–if you’re lucky, you can be proud of the “you” you’ve grown into. Growing up is a funny, bittersweet, surreal experience, but it can be infinitely rewarding if you allow it to be.

