The Utopia
Let me take you on a little excursion here, a little experiment of thought.
I've been missing a feeling I had a hard time describing. A mix of sentimentality, of yearning for a life I used to live. For a while, I thought what I was missing was the old internet.
I missed the feeling of being a teenager online. Of finding some weird little website at 2 a.m. and falling down a rabbit hole. Of having places I would visit, because I knew exactly what I would find there.
The internet felt simpler and less serious back then. And every now and then, the nostalgia of this era hits me hard.
For years, I thought the obvious answer was to leave social media altogether. If I left Instagram and TikTok and stopped spending so much time online, maybe I could get some of that feeling back.
But I’m no longer sure that’s the answer to it all. I do like the internet. Some days, I stumble across a Reel that inspires me, or a meme that makes me laugh. Then I think to myself, I actually don´t even want to leave social media. Because I get inspired, educated and laugh a lot and I wouldn´t want to miss out on that.
So maybe the problem isn’t the internet. Maybe it’s the way we move through it. And I started wondering: how can the internet feel like places again—instead of a limitless feed?
Back in the day, it felt like we visited the internet. Logged in, checked what we wanted to check and logged out to return to real life. But lines have become so fucking blurry, and everything feels like one big mess.
In my utopic excursion, the internet would once again become more centered around spaces.
I like the idea of having a little basket of my favorite places on the internet, all the things I actually want to return to. Mine lives on the homepage of my laptop, slowly curated over time. My celebrity crush’s Instagram (actually, there’s definitely more than one), my favorite Substack writers, some YouTubers I love watching, a page that lets me learn new words. Just a collection of little places I like being in. I feel like there’s something comforting about knowing where you’re going.
I think that way, it feels more like visiting spaces, instead of drowning in them. I do drown in them from time to time. But not as much anymore.
Some days, I even create rituals around it. I’ll make a cup of tea before watching a YouTube video I’ve been looking forward to. Maybe light some incense sticks. Put my phone somewhere I can’t immediately reach for it and sit down at my laptop and actually pay attention to the thing I came here to see.
It’s a little ridiculous, but it’s also kind of lovely, because suddenly, being online feels like doing something, not just being fed things until I get tired.
And maybe that is what I like about the idea of the internet as a collection of places.
The internet isn’t dead, and there’s so much more to it than Instagram and TikTok. There are weird little websites, blogs that haven’t been updated in six months, people writing about incredibly specific things, forums, newsletters, videos, photographs, playlists and entire corners of the internet you can still stumble into without an algorithm deciding what you should see next.
I want to believe there is still something magical about that. About finding a place and thinking: I like it here. About adding it to your little basket of places and coming back whenever you feel like it.
And maybe this is one of those places. A little corner of the internet to visit every now and then. Somewhere to read something, listen to something, look at something, find something you didn’t know you were looking for. Just a place you can return to.
I want people—myself included—to enjoy the internet again.
That’s the utopia, at least for me.