This is what happens when a throwaway Canva graphic gets invited to give a keynote. Or when a personality quiz becomes a brand deck. Or when you join a Discord server as a joke and leave 14 years later bound by a blood oath. Or when your star chart is just a JPEG of Mariah Carey and a rotating knife. Or if you subconscious started continually sending chain emails to your sense of self.
Every gallery needs a scam. Every museum has its forgery wing. Every archive has a ghost drawer. Mine is a collection of receipts from bad ideas I’m not humble enough to discard.
BEHOLD! A BRIEF HISTORY OF
BEING VERY ONLINE!
There’s a version of me that only speaks in early-2000s CW show dialogue and considers The O.C. a moral compass (though still try to resolve the plot of Smallville in therapy). There’s one that only thinks in end credits and one that lives inside a defunct Yahoo! Answers thread, still believing “plz respond” is a spell and still arguing about whether vampires can get acne—and honestly winning. Still another describes his aesthetic principles as “if a Hot Topic were legally ordained,” cites Spencer’s Gifts as a spiritual influence, and delivers all statements via PowerPoint to an audience of Funko Pops.
But I’m really just a VHS tape of a screensaver trying to remember its lines—looping forever, overexposed, convinced it was nominated for something in 1998, proud of its aspect ratio, and still waiting for Windows XP to call back.
