Brianne Johnson

“When you’re losing a game you don’t even want to play, or forcing a fit into a form you don’t want to be in, the best thing to do is to stop playing and go find your shape.” — A Soft Manifesto by Cortney Cassidy

“A different view into this, a more optimistic one which i choose to adopt, has to do with what being online helps people do. The original piece in The New Consumer talks about how "younger consumers are also more likely to say they feel “more valued for their talents” online than offline, feel “more appreciated” online, and feel “more creative” online." Which suggests to me the problem isn't necessarily how addictive being online is, it's how unappreciated people feel in the offline world. The internet helps us find our people.

I recently heard a great quote about what is the opposite of depression. It's not happiness. It's expression. And so when you have people say they effectively feel more expressive online, and can bond with others more attuned to their needs and points of view, then this gives me hope that there is a net positive effect of all this time we spend online.

Looking at it this way, i see great news in the idea that people have places where they can feel more like themselves, even if it may not fit into our current worldviews of what personal and collective flourishing looks like. When i grew up, playing video games was going to be the ruin of us all, and yet statistically speaking the vast majority of our generation turned out well enough (if anything, the lack of an economic and social safety net fucked us up later).

So it's entirely possible that a whole generation who feel better online than offline will turn out somehow ok as well. Better or worse than us? Impossible to tell. Different? Most likely.”

There is a beautiful and melancholic word I like called anemoia. It means nostalgia for a time or a place one has never known.

This is a sentiment I often sense from my generation, Gen Z—especially in recent years. I see it in the YouTube videos of old concerts that get millions of views. I see it in our fascination with polaroids, vinyls, vintage cameras, and VHS tapes. And I see it in our reaction to gut-wrenching videos about how life has changed.