Marquette University Intimations Project

Tim Korolev

This essay is sort-of an addendum to the previous essay I wrote, Inverse Outcast. It’s a similar concept – an experience that I was used to before the pandemic forced the rest of society to deal with it as well. However, the internet being as massive and many-faceted as it is, it’s a completely separate beast to just general social standing.

Due to my disconnect from most of my peers and family, I spent most of my teenage and young adult life online. I’d play online videogames. Lots, and lots, and lots of online videogames. I’d hang out in text rooms, in chat rooms, in discord servers. I made lots of online friends. I got used to knowing people just by the sound of their voice and the way they typed. I got used to seeing faces through a screen. I had long-distance relationships entirely online. Most of my world was online, and that was where I felt the safest, and the most accepted.

Then suddenly, the whole world was online. And most of the world was quite thoroughly confused – at least, if I use me remote Marquette classes and my roommates as a case study. Part of me felt pretty cool, like I was now the resident expert – although I rarely spoke up to help with issues, mostly due to my introversion. Part of me felt a little bit like some of my own personal world had been snatched away from me, and I guess that’s part of the inverse: my cozy little online communities being blown up with activity while the rest of society suffered from a lack of real life activity. I preferred it to be cozy. And a final, small part of me had this weird sensation that the place where I belonged was now filled with people who felt they couldn’t possibly belong there.

This last thought led to some questions and a lot of introspection. How bad is it really that I spent so much of my time online before? How much of it was my fault, and how much of it was the fault of the society around me? Should I try to spend less of my time online, and live more of my life in reality? Unfortunately, the pandemic didn’t allow for many experiments to answer those questions, and I ultimately ended up changing little to nothing about my lifestyle. However, as the quarantines are coming to an end and the pandemic is dying down, I think I’ve come to the conclusion that as long as I’m satisfied with my happiness and health, and my actions hurt no one else, it doesn’t matter how much of my life is online and how much is in person.

One final note to this small addendum about the internet and the pandemic: as mentioned in my other essay, I felt that spending time apart from my parents was a gift. I also mentioned I met a significant other. Here’s something crazy to think about: My parents don’t even know that I’m living with my boyfriend, which is a bit of a difficult thing to keep hidden from them when they ask me if I’m fully moved in to my new two-bedroom apartment and ask to see my bedroom – which doesn’t exist, as we only need one, and instead have the place set up as separate offices so we can both comfortably conduct our remote work and school. It’s a reality my parents will have to face eventually, and it’ll be up to them whether they want to accept that part of me or not, but here’s the current internet-related question I’m struggling with: do I use the internet to break the news and make it easier for myself, or do I wait until reality resumes to keep the confrontation more real?