Isabella Haid Those of us who grew up online can easily recall the refrain: “once you put something on the Internet, you can’t take it back.” But reality suggests otherwise: this fear tactic failed to account for the digital ruins which we encounter daily. They are so familiar, in fact, that we have become immune to the threat of loss. Irritated by the pop-up warning of a broken webpage or disheartened by the words “This Tweet has been deleted,” we have outlived the fanciful delusion of digital permanence. We collectively witnessed the quiet disappearance of GeoCities, Vine, Microsoft Explorer, Adobe Flash, and countless other platforms. All of which we commemorate through video compilations, memes of mourning, or open source emulator projects. And in overcoming this fear of an Internet that does not forget, a new kind of relationship to the Internet has emerged: when we log online, we willfully situate ourselves inside of a ruinous landscape. We are accustomed to the horror of nothing to be seen: navigating broken webpages or abandoned servers has become a coming of age ritual. We find ourselves unable to “take back” what we say or do from the Internet’s memory not because it became a facet of forever, but because it was displaced, sold, overwritten, or in some way ruined. We are acutely aware of the uncertainty undergirding digital media and its infrastructure. Similar to Hito Steyerl’s poor image, which “mocks the promises of digital technology... Only digital technology could produce such a dilapidated image in the first place.” While we expect computers to
Fuckjerry is basically Ellen for the memesphere
brilliant!