My Three-Year Blogiversary and Re-evaluating my Relationship with the Internet

Recently, I have been thinking a lot about my relationship with the Internet, and the history of my blog and the kind of content I write here. Today, March 26th, is also the three-year anniversary of this blog. It’s truly hard to believe that I started writing on here three years ago, and over the course of those years, this site has grown momentously.

When I started this blog, I was 15; now I am 18. Though it has only been three years, the difference between the person who wrote that first post and the person who is writing this one now is pretty dramatic– and that’s kind of why I’m writing this reflection!

Anyway coinciding with this most auspicious March date is some time I’ve spent recently thinking over my relationship to the Internet, and kind of re-evaluating how I use it.

The Malleability of Opinions and Illusion of Rationality

This blog has always been a place for me to share my thoughts on a wide array of things, from books to a set of more controversial topics. However, I’ve recently been coming to a realization about myself that though I used to regard my opinions as static and, of course, always correct– that turns out to be very far from the reality.

I was having a conversation with my friend about this last week: about how as I grow and change as a person, some of my opinions have changed with me, sometimes so drastically that I hardly recognize the old thought processes I used to regard as flawlessly logical and moral. So there are a lot of articles and posts and comments on here that in some way preserve a relic of the convictions of my younger self as I went on a journey of figuring out my opinions. There are posts written less than a year ago that I re-read and am surprised at how sure I was of something that I am no longer sure is true.

In short, I’ve been thinking really hard about how, after undergoing several major shifts in my worldview over the past couple of years, I no longer have such a naive trust that everything I think is right or that I won’t change my mind about any of it.

I guess I have also become more generally disillusioned with rationality, considering no one seems to be really rational. I used to naively assume that everything I thought was rational and logical, but after the array of radical shifts I’ve undergone in my thinking, I have begun to question all of that. I used to be very religious, and now I am very atheist. I used to not care at all about the food I ate, but now I am passionate about veganism. People sometimes still confront me about things I wrote online in the past, and I am forced to explain that well yeah I wrote that last year but now I’m not really sure I think that anymore…

But before I changed my mind on those things, I was 100% convinced I was right. And then realizing that I was actually very wrong– well, in my current view, that is– was kind of a shock to my system in that it was startling how ardently I could hold a position and not realize its flaws.

I have no doubt that my opinions will continue to change, and that other principles, like my value of free speech, will remain constant. However, the realizations I have come to, about how malleable and flexible my views seem to be, have made me want to step back a bit from assuming the soapbox online about every issue, considering how likely it is that I will change my opinions eventually, if not relatively soon!

In college, there are a lot of things I have come to learn about myself, and this is probably the most important one: assuming more humility about my opinions and beliefs. I’ve become interested in Stoicism too, recently, and it has helped me lessen my ego as well, and gain a more balanced view of myself as a human just as vulnerable to emotional reasoning and bias as anyone else I regarded as irrational.

I don’t intend to stop writing about the things I care about. But I have decided to take a bit of a step back on opining on certain things– or at least to temper my rhetoric with a less hubristic approach. Honestly, I can’t tell if this is a spineless thing to do or a wise thing to do, but I don’t think it is always worth it anymore to invite controversy about ideas and convictions that are subject to change. At least not in the climate of social media and the Internet, which is full of vitriol and devoid of nuance.

Privacy

Another thing I have been thinking about recently is my attitude towards privacy online. I definitely am a very active Internet user, and it has only been in the past few months that I have begun to remove and privatize more of my social profiles. As I get older, though, and begin living the “Adult Life” I am beginning to realize that not every single one of my thoughts needs to be broadcasted at all times to the world!

This has caused me to somewhat change the way I think about the articles I write or the social media profiles I create.

(And technically, I am being hypocritical about this right now, by even writing this post– why must it be announced why I am altering the content of my blog? But anyway, I digress…)

Other Priorities

I have also been making a slight shift to focus more on creative writing. I have several projects that I am working on right now, and am planning to treat my creative writing as a higher priority in my life going forward.

All of this rhetorical meandering is to say, essentially, that going forward I will be treating my blog slightly differently.

However I definitely plan to continue using this site as a means to express myself.