All this year I’ve been treating social media like an 18&up club. I still remember turning 18 and lining up in the cold in front of the Sound Factory in SF, paying $20 to be herded like cattle into a dark warehouse by a port, bouncers interrogating my driver’s license with a tiny flashlight, and getting a big black X sharpied onto the back of my hand to let the bartenders know that I’m only allowed to drink soda.
After I’d paid my premium, bought my $12 Roy Rogers, and found a nice dark corner to awkwardly bob my head to Jagged Edge songs all night, I’d contemplate two main things: (1) What are 21&up clubs like? (2) Wtf are these people who are 21&up doing at an 18&up club?
All of this is to say that I spent so much of 2017, after a neck-aching Facebook session, asking myself, “Wtf am I doing here?” Didn’t I hop on the social media wagon during my college years, when I also wore XXL Ecko tees and thought that drinking a SlimFast milkshake with my Del Taco dinner meant I was being healthy? How many things have I outgrown since my college years, and why is feeding the Facebook machine pretty much the only habit I’ve maintained consistently since then?
At a certain point in my life, walking down the street and seeing people shivering in line, waiting to get felt up by a bouncer so they can shout at each other to compete with the bassline, I thought to myself, not for me anymore. I’m starting to feel the same way about social media.
But just because I don’t go to clubs anymore doesn’t mean I don’t still love music, and just because I’m backing off of the feedz doesn’t mean I don’t still love the internet. Actually, I miss the old internet – the dodgy but still relatively more-wholesome internet, where you could stumble upon something amazing, simply because someone else thought this thing would be cool to share. When the internet was a playground, and not a boutique gym.
This week I’m sharing “Flyin’ Bamboo,” a new music video for a song by Nitai Hershkovits and MNDSGN, animated by Felix Colgrave. I’ve been following Colgrave ever since I stumbled upon his work during a good old-fashioned Youtube wormhole dive. My time away from social has offered me the space to do these again, they feel like hikes through the internet as opposed to the daily traffic jam commute. The song and accompanying cartoon is a beautiful way to start the weekend, and a reminder that, despite all its flaws, the Internet giveth.