I had the joy of attending a childhood friend's wedding last week.
I ended up meeting friends that I hadn't spoken to in 17 years. These were boys and girls I had spent half of my life with. A lot of who I am on the inside was shaped by the experiences we shared together.
It felt odd that we had failed to stay in touch, but there were no guilt trips.
Conversations flowed without any of us skipping a beat. There was so much to talk about. I had no idea what any of them were up to, and at multiple points felt bad asking about things I should have already known.
Back in school, afterparties happened over mailing lists and chatrooms, which is where we embraced the personas we wished to project. And boy, did we project!
Then at some point we moved to Orkut. That was a blast. We flexed our ASCII names, scrapbook counters and cringeworthy testimonials.
The internet felt beautiful then.
Then we went our different ways, moving on from school to college, and from Orkut to Facebook. But we still knew what everyone was up to.
Facebook was actually a decent platform for even the quiet ones among us to share life updates. Then Zuck made it a less cool place to hang out, so we'd move on to his money minting machine that was Insta. We did, and lost track of each other in the process.
We agreed that social media is now for consuming memes, reels and ads for things we could do without. Rarely do we post honest updates about what's going on in our lives, and we've lost the ability to follow each other's journeys on the internet.
I now have Instagram handles of everyone I met. Most of them (mine included) are empty lurker profiles. Maybe we'll create a group and stir things up with memes. But I doubt a platform built for ads will help us feel connected.
We need more social, less media.