A Softer Internet

When it felt more like a window than a stage (and coming back to it)

Lately I have been thinking about the internet. Not the one we use now, but the one we grew up with. And how it relates to the way we create or the way we share what we create.

This reflection started when I was listening to a podcast recently — Digging with Flo — a conversation with Clairo (I recommended her NTS show here before), where she talks about growing up in a small city, at a time when the internet was just starting to be a thing. She was talking about spending time alone in her room, daydreaming, discovering music, imagining who she wanted to become, or where she might live someday. And it hit me how familiar that felt.

It made me realize that years ago I shared my creativity (and myself in general) much more freely online than I do now. I posted my notebooks, pictures, thoughts without overthinking them too much or fearing to be judged.

For those of us born around 1990, the internet was not a stage at first. It was more like a window. A portal. A place to explore quietly. A place to find yourself reflected in music, words, and strangers who somehow felt close.

I also remember how naturally we started expressing ourselves there. It was so different, there was no strategy, no audience metrics, no pressure to be consistent or liked. It was just sharing. We just wanted to put something somewhere.
And I’m not sure how or why but somewhere along the way, that innocence shifted.

Today, sharing feels heavier. More exposed. I feel like creativity online often now comes with the risk of comparison, and the constant awareness of being seen. Even when we really value what we are creating (or wanting to create), it is still easy to have in mind some external standards and start questioning the value of what we’re making before we even let it exist.
This feeling has been haunting me for a while, I often have many ideas of things I want to do, and before I even start, If I think it wont be perfect enough I end not even tying… (like is happening with sharing here with you)
For me sharing often means navigating that space between wanting to express myself, but also wanting to protect myself.

And this is why I have been feeling hesitant about continuing to write these letters.
Every time I sit down to write I notice that same resistance. The questioning. The urge to wait until I have something “better” or more useful to say.
The fear that maybe I’m not “enough” of a writer to take up space.
The fear that I’m repeating myself in each letter.
The fear that what feels big inside me might feel small or irrelevant to someone else…And it is funny because at the same time this is the place where I want to be the most honest.
Here I don’t want to pretend I have things figured out.
Here I want to write exactly from this place: the in-between one, the one that is still becoming.

But besides all the fears and insecurities, every time I finally send a new letter I remember that this was never meant to be about certainty or perfection, but about presence (and then I finally press send).
Because what I’m sharing comes from feeling rather than from clarity.

And this thoughts also reflect on the art I consume. Words, images, music that come from feelings. And here is where I come back to what I have always loved about the internet.
Despite everything, the noise, the exposure, the comparison, this is still the place where I discover many of the things that inspire me, that bring me joy:
A song that suddenly feels like it was written for me.
A sentence that names something I didn’t know how to say.
An image that makes me pause and smile because reminds me of someone.
That magic hasn’t disappeared.
I still feel there is a lot of room for connection, with others and with ourselves. I still sometimes feel like that teenager that see things from a screen (window), to be honest some of those online connections, random follows or posts are what provably took me to where I’m now, not just geographically but also emotionally.

And maybe that’s why I still feel this need to share. Not to perform or to build something perfect — but just to share.
To say: this touched me, maybe it will touch you too.

This letter is an invitation back to that softer internet. A place where we allow ourselves to daydream again, to be moved, to create (curate, share… you name it) without fully knowing where it’s going.
A place where sharing is not about exposure, but about connection.

Thank you for reading, and I hope you keep coming back.

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I’ll leave here some other substacks that inspire often (they are all from visual artists that I found thanks to our beloved internet, they all have something in common, something that I really love, the connection between visual and phonetic language as a creative tool):
- Bad Days Are Also Part of a Very Good and Sexy Life by Victoria Bencsik
- Little Blue Life by Celeste Hartley
- Unsupervised by Sky Fusco
- Catching shower flowers by Tess Guinery
- Amanda Jones work

Artworks included:
1. Shagey
2. Jordan Kae