I Love My Computer Because My Friends Live in It: Stories from an Online Life

169 Pages·2017·4.62 MB·English

by  Jess Kimball Leslie

Copyright
Copyright © 2017 by Jess Kimball Leslie Published by Running Press,
An Imprint of Perseus Books, LLC, A Subsidiary of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright
Conventions This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording,
or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter
invented, without written permission from the publisher.
Books published by Running Press are available at special discounts for bulk
purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other
organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets
Department at Perseus Books, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA
19103, or call [phone], ext. 5000, or e-mail
special.mar
E3-20170331-JV-PC
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue: Seventh Grade in the 1990s
1980S AND 1990S TECHNOLOGY, REMEMBERED
America, Online
The Glorious Inelegance of the 1990s Family Computer
Yahoo!, I Think I’m Gay
2000–2005 TECHNOLOGY, REMEMBERED
The Achilles’ Heel of Myspace Tom
Jesus Had a BlackBerry
The Gawker New Yorker
2005–2010 TECHNOLOGY, REMEMBERED
Why I Hate Twitter, the Publicly Traded Media Company
The People I Have to Stalk on Facebook
The Prom King on Instagram, Ten Years After the Party
Match.com Is Like Putting Rosie from The Jetsons in Charge of Your Dating Life
Friends Don’t Let Friends Start Startups
2015 TECHNOLOGY AND BEYOND
Adopt a Microwave on Petfinder.com
Epilogue: Seventh Grade All Over Again
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Photo Credits
For Beckett and Lauren
For Dad
Prologue:
Seventh Grade in the 1990s
“EMAIL? Ohmigod, I could never, like, write for fun.”
It was 1996, and my seventh-grade English teacher had just decided it would
be no big deal to tell my classmates about the conversation she and I had the
night before on America Online. “If you have a question about literary symbols,
just send me an American Online Email like Jess did last night!!!” She’d said it
exactly like that: American Online Email. It was as if the woman thought that an
anecdote about me, the school’s string bass player and part-time assistant
lighting director, would somehow convince the soccer players to spend their
evenings on the Internet too, trading thoughtful emails about Victor Hugo. You
know, instead of gathering in our town’s refinished basements and having drunk
almost-sex on affordable carpeting.
“Who would ever type someone a letter?” asked a kid in the very back of our
classroom, one who seemed to be living his life in a perpetual impersonation of
Beavis and/or Butthead.
“Who can type?!” someone else wondered aloud.
A refrigerator-sized boy pounded his desk in agreement. A smart girl who
never spoke found the courage to laugh. A foreign exchange student—one whom
we’d ritualistically ignored for almost a year—smiled as if he finally belonged.
There I sat, bearing witness to a full-on kaleidoscope of adolescent
togetherness as the dumb kids, the cool kids, the forgotten kids, and the
overparented kids all joined as one, mocking the very notions of email, instant
messages, and the pure exertion of the written word in general. The class’s
howling laughter put my teacher back in her rightful place, and AOL was never
mentioned in our classroom again.
It’s hard to remember, but when America first saw the Internet, we confidently
dismissed its importance. “The World Wide Web won’t be nirvana!!!”
proclaimed Newsweek, thrilled to debunk such a silly trend. “Allison, can you
explain what ‘Internet’ is?” asked a baffled Katie Couric on live TV, rolling her
eyes.
At the time the coveted technology was the personal phone line. My seventh-
grade classmates didn’t want to hang out with strangers on AOL message
boards; they wanted their very own number in the phone book so they could call
the people they already knew. The personal phone line was the thing to beg for
at Christmas. “Oh my GOD, the personal phone line!!!” my friend Aaron
screeched with delight one evening as we reminisced over dinner. “I remember I
was trying to get a job as a waiter in high school,” Aaron went on, “and when I
finally got an interview, the restaurant manager told me I needed previous
experience in order to apply. I mean, are you even kidding me? It was a Red
Lobster! Anyway, I looked this manager dead in the eyes and assured him that I
had tons of previous experience. I wrote down my friend Jeanette’s personal
phone number on that application form, and I strutted right out that door. For
two weeks Jeanette answered her phone every day after school with ‘The
Ground Round, how may we help you?’ or ‘Good evening, thank you for calling
the Ground Round, this is Jeanette speaking, the manager.’ When the big call
finally came through, Jeanette said, ‘The Ground Round, this is Jeanette
speaking, the manager. Oh yes, Aaron! What a talent. Very busy. So
hardworking. You want to speak with him? Let me go get him. Oh, wait a
minute, I’m so sorry, but Aaron can’t come to the phone right now—he has three
ten tops. He has buffet detail. He’s restocking the make-your-own-salad station,
and we are completely out of ham cubes. Aaron, we’re out of ham cubes!!!!!!
Anyway, what on earth would I do without Aaron? He is simply a star here at
the Ground Round.’”
Unlike my friend Aaron, who used the largely computer-free 1990s to his
own advantage, I was not built for the decade. I was nothing but a closeted
lesbian with a bowl cut, constantly faking sick so I could stay home from school
and email with my only friends, an assortment of opinionated, prolific shut-ins
scattered across America and several decades my senior. Were I a 2010s kid, I’d
probably have a really strange Tumblr and a small smattering of followers
spread across the colder and therefore odder parts of the globe, but at least there
would presumably be people my own age who’d get me. Because I was growing
up in the 1990s, however, it was just me and my sale-rack Abercrombie & Fitch
track pants, counting the hours until school ended and I could run home to be