2.1 KiB
Metastasized Identity
When I was a boy in middle and high school, there were lots of other kids who, during one year were stoners, and the next, were computer nerds. One year were jocks, and the next, were stoners. One year were D&D geeks, and the next, were into cars.
There was also no internet, and no social media. The only place one could "broadcast" an "identity", was within one's own circle of friends, and at most, earn a reputation throughout the school. Changing schools was basically akin to the witness protection program. Nobody knew who you were, and you could become anyone you wanted to be.
Your tween/teen years should be fluid. They should be a point in time in your life, when you experiment and play with different ways of being. They should be an opportunity to determine what kind of person you want to be when you're done with your teens.
This girl is (as she admits in the video) seventeen. What's going to happen when, in her senior year of high school, she decides she's "not into trans anymore"? In effect, she cannot do this. The internet will see to that. She will be forced to face the passing nonsense of her changing juvenile attitudes about life pretty much for the rest of her life. The choice she has made to select this particular set of prejudices as the ones she puts on the internet, means this is the set of prejudices she will have to either apologize for, or double down on, for the rest of her life.
I am, in this way, profoundly grateful that the internet did not exist when I was a tween/teen. It afforded me the freedom to fuck up, without the need to apologize to the entirety of western society for it. It suffered me the patience and tolerance to pass through periods of prejudice and rage without having to worry about the real human damage my naive and ill-conceived ideas and attitudes might have on the entire fucking planet.
I don't know how we put this genie back in the bottle. I don't even think we should, necessarily, try to. But I have to admit a lack of optimism (and perhaps a lack of imagination), when it comes to thinking about what this means for human social evolution.