Digitally Analog: an Etymology

Sometime around 2002, my draw to the internet began.

My childhood best friend told me about a website called Neopets where you could adopt and care for digital pets, explore their world, and play games. I was sold. Hours slipped away playing Hasee Bounce and Kass Basher, gambling on the spinners, and logging in for my daily freebies (shout out to Jellyneo—you’re a real one). The digital world grabbed my attention fully for the first time.

Around the same time, I discovered the entrancing art of origami. With only folded paper, I created animals, boxes, and sometimes a crumpled mess. I learned about the practice of folding one thousand cranes, and, inspired, I memorized the pattern and folded paper whenever I had the chance. Cranes flew onto my parents' laps during every road trip. Piles grew in the corners of my room. I once attempted a crane so small that by the time I finished, the bird sat no more than the size of my pinky nail.

At the start, online and offline revolved around creatures, games, and discovery.

As I traversed into middle school, Neopets became "for kids".

I moved on to bigger and better things known as MySpace and MSN Messenger. I had my top eight locked IN and constantly scrolled Pimp-My-Profile for the perfect scene-adjacent layout style. It was a beautiful time of gossiping with friends, flirting with school rivals, and passive aggressively calling out your enemies via status message. What, at the time, felt like self discovery in my profile-of-the-week, became the first step towards displaying an idealized digital footprint.

In tandem with honing in on my online aesthetic, in middle school I first journeyed into fine art photography. My dad teaches platinum-palladium darkroom printing workshops to this day, and at thirteen, I decided I wanted to learn. My first print? Two lilies in a purple vase, sitting on a wooden outdoor table. Simple, effective, and shockingly to me at the time, something a friend of my dad's wanted to buy! Not only did my dad celebrate and encourage me to learn several kinds of darkroom printing, my parents also regularly took my sister and I to art galleries, museums, and concerts, all of which kick-started my future interest in artistic fineries.

Thus far, while the connection of creatures blossomed into an interest in art, my online life only centered around games or chats with real-life friends. Then came high school and a turn towards chronic scrolling. You know her! You probably love to hate her! Please welcome, Tumblr.

I can spot a SuperWhoLockian to this day.

After all, I do like your shoelaces. At the height of my Tumblr use, I ran 8 blogs and lived through some of the ancient lore. My interest in the arts faded from physical media. I printed less, I nearly stopped reading for fun. My art projects themselves became digital.

My first dose of internet disillusionment also came from Tumblr. In response to an internationally notorious school shooting at my university, I watched different corners of my feed turn a complicated tragedy into a soapbox for individual issues. My shared trauma became the poster child for social reform with no empathy for the people grieving in real time. I struggled with the onslaught of posts reliving that dark day and decided to leave. Unfortunately, cut cold turkey from my life, I simply replaced Tumblr with another platform.

As a semi-professional photographer, I excused my excess time on Instagram as "business needs" to find new content and post regularly. In reality, this further pulled me down the rabbit hole – my personal page, my business profile, don't forget the finsta. It seemed like every platform I turned to, it was not just about posting more content, but proliferating my presence. The schism between my digital and analog lives deepened.

One day, we were told to stay inside.

I grew anxious and restless. Between sleep, work, and video games, I spent 20 or more hours a day in one room. I shared the right (and wrong) posts on Instagram during that infamous summer. I reached a point where I felt guilty taking up space in the ever expanding digital universe. I stopped posting and became a silent observer. I poked fun at TikTok, that is, until I downloaded TikTok. The speed at which the app reflected my interests in an echo chamber of mirrors floored me and encouraged my consistent engagement. One day, I noticed that five hours passed scrolling through forgettable content and I knew something had to change.

I found no true joy in my digital life. In another reality where one of my several attempts at internet fame took off, maybe the community fulfills me. But in this reality, I crave the tangibility of a life offline.

Finding harmony became my top priority.

In the past few years, I retrained myself to reach for a book rather than my phone. I learned pottery and stained glass and I regularly push myself to draw even when I think it's Bad™. I won't pretend that I cut off scrolling entirely, but now I when fly past a few unwatched videos, I close the app. (I also relegated Tiktok and Instagram to my iPad to shame myself out of scrolling in public. Highly recommend!)

Now, an idea keeps simmering, never feeling ready, but I think it's time. I want to live in peace with our permanently digital world. To find the happy medium between chronically online and completely disconnected. I want to build community, create art, and thrive in the "real" world, while acknowledging that the internet presents a unique way to accomplish exactly that.

So we get back to the title: what is the etymology of Digitally Analog? I love my real world life. I accept my pull to online spaces. Welcome to my attempt to marry the two, a recording of my analog journey to escape digital escapism.