SarahAs one tweet said, “2020 is a year I can’t wait to speak of in past tense.” I understand the sentiment: it has been a difficult period for many. However, I am also genuinely curious. How will we speak of it in past tense? I turn towards the nebulous river of digital discourse. I also see smaller pools where we’ve preserved our personal experiences for ourselves and our social circles. Some of these are suspiciously shiny through curation, and some will be washed away, but surely critics overstate the river’s transience. The internet never forgets, indeed, and if we remain critical and intentional in our online engagement, it can be a powerful tool for capturing and shaping our sense of history.
Pandemic Memes
In considering this, I first dip my toe into pandemic memes. Tongue-in-cheek empathy for future history students has become its own subgenre. Users imagine “the important stuff… about 2020” as comically large textbooks or floods of highlighter. Dozens of tweets since the spring speculate on how bizarre learning about this period will be. Variants comment on the year’s surreal timeline and whether the latest event was on one’s “bingo card”. As Ashley Nicole Black (@ashleyn1cole) quips, “People keep saying the 2020 writers room is crazy, but actually this season makes sense. Because everything that’s going wrong now was foreshadowed, and we watched the characters make all the bad decisions that led to where we are now.” The line between humour and despair is blurred.
These memes function as a communal coping mechanism, yet they also reflect awareness that this moment is unusual and worthy of remembering. Skimming through them, I’m reminded of families telling stories at a party; first dates or road trips are inscribed deeper into shared lore. Meme sharing could be considered a digital oral tradition. The pandemic has affected people and places very differently, but broad swaths of the population experience shared cultural touchpoints. Recognition enables jokes about “…how we all went from learning to make banana bread to… abolish[ing] the police in a matter of weeks”. Social media moves quickly, yet it let us reflect on a shared zeitgeist as it develops. That said, not everyone agrees with this nuance.
Effects of Technology
Technology gets accused of a lot of things, including manipulating time. Social media is linked to a dual crime: fixating users in the “now” while robbing the real-world “now” of its deserved attention. Screens absorb us with their rapidly updating feeds. Writer and artist Jenny Odell suggests that our phones act as a “sensory deprivation chamber” that we use to “assault ourselves with information… at a rate that is frankly inhumane”. To keep up, we may be inattentive to the world around us. However, the “tyranny of newness” suggests that we cannot engage with any time but the present. As critic Evgeny Morozov asserts, “Today everything comes to an end virtually as soon as it appears… News shrinks to the size of socially instantaneous, and the immediate instant tends to disappear”. If our attention is constantly drawn to an updating feed of minutiae, it is hard to deeply engage, period. We are stuck in the present, but in a fragmented, ever-shifting way.
I am skeptical, yet I recognize myself in some of these charges. If I need to focus on writing or serious conversation, I sometimes move my phone so it can’t tempt me. When an internet outage prevents me from reflexively refreshing my feeds, I realize how often I seek new input. However, I deny that the past is erased. To the contrary, technology is a potent and meaningful tool for remembering. Admittedly, the past we inhabit online is a curated one. Social and corporate factors prevent true objectivity, and if anything, technology has strengthened the human impulse to selectively remember. However, the internet has a more nuanced relationship with time than commonly expected. 2020 serves as a potent example.
“Pandemic Time”
For many people, time has felt different since COVID-19. Among other factors, stress and (often) restricted spatial environments blur the edges of passing days. As psychologist and neuroscientist Kevin LaBar notes in “How the Coronavirus Pandemic Is Warping Our Sense of Time”, many cope with this shift through establishing new routines and gradually regaining peace amid new norms. However, even if we haven’t internalized time’s passage, it’s now late summer. Restrictions are lifting, yet much remains uncertain about the present and future.
Faced with this oscillating sense of time, I am curious how digital communities will shape collective memories. We see this already in memes and more serious posts about current issues. Where else will details of this era be curated and encoded? When all is finished, will our societies remember more about the pop culture trends or the political turmoil surrounding viral spread? I suspect that it will depend on who you ask, as well as that person’s communities. Either way, this rebuts the claim that “the immediate instant tends to disappear” online. The pandemic represents a particularly interesting case because of how it impacts such a broad, worldwide scope, even if experiences vary from privilege and various socio-political factors. Users can share their own angle on a widely experienced event. Turning to my own life, I’ve realized I also craft my past using digital tools.
Remembering Alone and Together
The desire to curate memories is not unique to the pandemic. As a sentimental and paranoid person, I have always been a digital pack rat. I keep multiple backups of photos and documents, often emailing myself my own in-progress essays. I realize these steps waste time, since saving usually goes off without a hitch. However, to me, it is worth the peace of mind and the ability to access my digital past. Writer Andrew Sullivan argues that technology enables the “oldest human skills [to] atrophy”, and that may be so, but admitting weakness doesn’t grant me a perfect memory. Why wouldn’t I use digital memory to enhance my own?
On a personal level, I find the act of intentionally remembering life to be constructive, and digital tools help me do this. For instance, recording feelings and activities in Daylio began as a wish to track moods. While the app helped me understand trends, I’ve also valued its “at a glance” review of the past. Apparently falling in love helps your mood, or so the graph shows. Minutiae are preserved: on June 12th I read for fun, cooked a tangy peanut dish, and received a delivery. Journaling is a comparable analogue practice, but it’s not quite as convenient. When I neglect my notebook, days blend into months, but the app’s rapidity makes it easy to record as much or little of these smaller moments as desired. I also enjoy looking back at my Instagram feed or Facebook photos.
Perhaps fittingly, social media excels at “remembering with”, or reliving memories alongside others. This communal practice may be intentional or spontaneous – for example, Facebook presents moments I didn’t know I wanted to remember. See what you did seven years ago? Did you know you befriended this person three years ago today? Share it! Memories are often combined in bite-sized packages, ranging from birthday collages, one-second-a-day videos, “Top 9” posts, to whatever becomes popular among one’s friends. Do users always want these long-forgotten reminders? Surely not, but platforms provide at least an illusion of choice: on Facebook, one can require approvals for tagging or “take a break” from someone’s posts. Social platforms make it easy to recirculate shared memories, often fostering positive emotions and rewarding time online.
It is worth acknowledging that personal feeds are inherently idealized: we want to remember a fun event but forget the argument on the ride home. The drive towards positivity appeals to human nature on a deeper level. Facebook’s push to share memories also points to the duality of relationship maintenance and image management. That birthday collage will hopefully encourage its recipient, yet it also impacts the public image of both sender and recipient. However, dwelling on this aspect feels cynical. Overall, “remembering with” can be personally meaningful, and it can help bring certain moments to the fore of a social circle’s consciousness.
Risks
Let’s regroup. If apps connect us to important personal and societal conversations, why the backlash? Does “tyranny of newness” overtake the internet’s capacity for thoughtful memory stewardship? How might users balance digital remembering with experiencing “the real world”? Online memory-keeping also requires critical reflection. How might we benefit from this digital river without being swept away by its power and speed?
First, we must consider consent: that we have it before posting content involving others, and that we fully understand what we consent to upon sharing personal data online. We need critical awareness as we navigate digital space, as well as acknowledgement of behind-the-scenes processes.
“The internet never forgets”, as noted by scholar Sherry Turkle and others. I grew up hearing “employers will Google you”, and I’m sometimes curious enough to try. Once, I found an embarrassing teenage story I’d written. Later, someone shared my details on a contact list; I requested its removal. These examples are admittedly tame. Public information could someday pose a safety risk; even now, I uneasily wonder how much advertisers know about me. Nonetheless, I’m grateful my public digital footprint is fairly innocent and self-instated.
Increasingly, this is no longer the case. Many children are growing up and realizing their parents publicized much of their lives online, spurring challenging conversations about consent and freedom to curate one’s own digital identity. Some may harness these concerns as an argument for full non-engagement and heightened privacy. Viktor Mayer-Schönberger stands out as an advocate for “the capacity to forget”. Among other points, he argues that digital-fueled “inability to forget” may have unintended consequences, including self-censorship, unwanted image circulation, and struggling to move on from conflicts or mistakes. While these are valid points, I think the internet’s resilient memory is a better argument for thoughtful, consensual sharing.
Similarly, it is worth noting that communities do not have full agency over content creation. On social media, users generally consent to a range of corporate interests that influence feeds (e.g. sponsored posts, algorithms). Intuitively, users may assume content appears for its popularity or quality. However, as a content producer, paying may mean the difference between visibility and obscurity. The exchange of money for views has been called “corporate Kairos” by rhetoric scholars, and it is important to some platforms’ business models. The ethics of corporate interference can become even messier in the age of sensationalized “fake news” and debates over platforms’ responsibility to fact-check. These factors mean that while useful, the internet is far from an unbiased repository of community content. Social media helps to form history, but content cannot be accepted as such without critical engagement.
Let’s say that we have considered consent and understand the corporate factors at play. How might we address critiques that social media undermines users’ experiences of the present? Intentionality is a promising antidote.
Recall how Odell compared phones with “sensory deprivation chamber[s]”. Among other points, she urges us to periodically disconnect and better attend to the world around us. Consider the title of her book: “How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy”. Odell advocates “a kind of nothing that’s necessary for, at the end of the day, doing something”. Resting is healthy. To counter the popular phrase #FOMO, she suggests the “Necessity of Sometimes Missing Out” (#NOSMO). It is unrealistic to consume the entire river of content as it rushes by, and constant archiving prevents rest. Instead, why not scroll and upload in deliberate moderation? Odell herself shares footage of her “birdnoticing”.
As a digital culture professor, Jason Farman addresses another angle. Nobody argues that a room of texters represents ideal social bonding. However, Farman highlights how technology can deepen our relationships and connections to place. If our entire conversation associates “mobile media with a lack of meaningful connection and a distracted mind… [it disregards] the wide range of ways we use our devices”. Intention and nuance matter. How, when, and where do we engage with devices?
Why Digital Memory Matters
Ultimately, risks do not invalidate the positive potential of social media and other technology. Sometimes, you don’t want your voice or ideas to be forgotten. Aside from spreading hate, I believe users always deserve to join digital conversation. You should get the chance to be heard, or at least to share what you value with a smaller circle.
To that end, let us engage with awareness and intentionality. We have the chance to be part of a conversation greater than ourselves – one that endures. Looking at artifacts of the early pandemic and my own life, I refuse to believe that “the immediate instant tends to disappear” as a matter of course.
How, then, is digital discourse different from shouting into a corporatized void? Why do I resist Morozov’s claim that the past dissolves? Consider the personal and public spheres. I admit that what I share on Twitter or Instagram will likely embody “the size of the socially instantaneous”, as Morozov says. I don’t have many followers. However, my posts or tweets do matter to me and sometimes to the small audience they reach. Either way, these artifacts reinforce my own meaning creation. I may never realize if they did impact someone; perhaps they inspired someone, or upset them, or subtly shaped their perception of a topic. Either way, I’ve exercised my ability to speak and share a part of myself.
By joining a broader stream of data, I can participate in a larger social conversation, even if my contribution isn’t broadly seen. With public accounts, a thought could always go viral. However, even liking or sharing others’ content is a way of reinforcing or critiquing their perspectives. In my own circles, collective understandings of the BLM protests were shaped by grassroots posts, not only mainstream media. “Good takes” are shared and praised, and “bad takes” are either held up to mock, heralded by others with opposing views, or simply ignored in the shifting stream of discourse. Even if my own contribution is quiet, for better or worse, it is exciting to be part of larger movements that reflect on and codify the passage of time.
So – where does this leave us? Ultimately, the internet is not a perfect tool. It can be overly influenced by corporate interests. Its stream of content captures users’ attention a bit too easily. However, intentionality and critical awareness help mitigate these pitfalls as we engage in social media and other platforms. I reject the idea that we are restricted to a fractured, disappearing “now”. The internet, especially social media, serves as a powerful channel for memory. As individuals, we curate and protect our own idealized pasts, and we “remember with” our peers on social media. As a collective, we read and contribute to broader discussions about the cultural zeitgeist – especially during the pandemic. What will happen? What will we remember? Time will tell, but I expect hints will emerge on platforms like Twitter. This time, we are all part of the story.
Original version submitted for ENGL 799. Photos mine – Newfoundland (dandelions and puffins), Alberta (Drumheller dinosaurs)