[filmgirlcw]

I don’t disagree that things are more extreme now and that the algorithm reinforces the most toxic stuff, but as someone who has been on the internet for most of my life , I can assure you that being a woman on the internet has always been terrible (I had pedos trying to get photos from me in AOL chat rooms in 1994 when I was 10 years old), there have always been edgy shitlords making Holocaust jokes, and the whole modern grooming discourse literally started with chat rooms in the early to mid 1990s.

Yes, it is absolutely worse in some ways now, not just because some stuff has become desensitized and de-rigeur, as well as the aforementioned algorithm, but let’s not create a hagiography around the halcyon days of “online” that never actually existed.

Like Bane, I grew up in this pit of darkness and was molded by it, and I have true love and affection for it, but like, this element has always been here. Always.