Leveraging the internet as a non-digital native is not easy.
Born in 1982, I have been reluctantly enveloped in the unfurling of the information age. My family never had a computer in our home while I was growing up. I got my first email address in 2000 once I needed it for college. I have seen fads and phases rise up and pass me by in a rapid procession that beggars comprehension.
I live in a liminal space between the 20th and 21st centuries and most days that does not bother me. But recently I have tried to gain proficiency in the modes of communication common among digital natives so as to build awareness of my fiction writing.
Behaviors like filming yourself, talking freely to a camera or recording device, pouring time and interest into the fractured and amateur outpouring of an infinite sea of strangers…I just don’t have it.
My default mode is quiet.
I am embarrassed for other people’s lack of dignity.
I have to actively remind myself to engage with social media.
No matter how much I remind myself to treat it like a job and do it because I have to, the base assumptions of the platform elude me.
If you’ve ever read a history book and thought that people’s assumptions and motivations made no sense you begin to see the way I view daily life on the current iteration of the internet.
It’s an alien culture.