I cancelled myself since none of you would do it.

On social media breaks, TikTok brain rot and the post-influencer era.

I ghosted. I feel like I should offer an apology. It’s been an almost ten-year parasocial relationship between me, you, and YouTube, and I left without a goodbye. It’s been half a year of this content creator creating no content, half a year since I deleted TikTok, and I just dipped my toes back into Instagram in January. Social media and I have been on a break, I should say, and I’ve both loved and absolutely hated every moment of it.

Growth spurts are awkward and clumsy, and you think they’re done by the time you’re in your early twenties, but I’m coming to terms with it being an embarrassing, never-ending process. This past half-year has felt like a constant and painful shedding of the exoskeleton I crafted for my online persona known as Kristen Leo. The worst part is I have no clue what’s emerging. A moth? A wasp? An ancient Egyptian curse? Whatever it is, I can’t help but want to keep it to myself until it’s ready to be revealed.

I want to guard this squishy, vulnerable new version of me from all those who want to poke and prod it, or worse, make fun of it for being so ugly and stupid.

While the new Kris11 update is still downloading (get it? Kristen - KrisTEN - Kris11 - ok I’ll stop now) I’ve been looking back at the 15+ years of the online performance/experience I’ve subjected myself to and examining what ultimately made me need this self-induced social media cancellation. Since 2009, I’ve been evolving with the internet, warping myself and my content to fit into whatever the online audiences have had an appetite for. But this latest era… I don’t know if I’m built for this one - I don’t know if any of us are.

PART 1 - The age of dial up

The screeching siren of the dial-up modem is scarred into my eardrums eternally. Why did it sound like that? What evil cursed them all to make that same noise? The phone would ring, and if anyone answered, the connection was cut. Adult and child screams of despair would ensue.

I had a hand-me-down PC, a massive eggshell-colored plastic block of a screen that took up half my desk. I used it to email my cousins in America but mostly to download pictures of Wentworth Miller (from the TV show Prison Break). I’d wait, staring eagerly at the glowing low-res screen as each photo could take up to a minute to load. I would download them, transfer them to my flip phone, and the next day at recess, my high school friends and I would hover over our devices and exchange images of him like he was a Pokémon.

PART 2 - The rise of the blogger

As the internet got faster, my obsession with Wentworth Miller faded. His photos were replaced with files full of fashion editorials and runway looks. While scouring the web, I came across fashion blog after fashion blog of girls sharing their outfits with the world. For the popular bloggers, their clothes were a mix of designer pieces I could never dream of affording and Zara staples that repeatedly popped up on every blog. Their photos, as staged as they were, felt like the most genuine thing the internet could offer a girl like me at the time. I was 18 or so, delusional, isolated, and fashion blogging connected me to this borderless world in fashion.

With the pennies I saved from working retail during the winter of '09-'10, I bought a DSLR camera and made my brother and college friends take my photos. I wore clothes, I posted, I wrote embarrassing captions, I read other blogs, I left comments, I learned HTML and CSS so I could customize my blog, I learned how to pirate Photoshop and then learned how to use it so I could color correct, add filters, and slim my legs in my photos. I got things gifted to me to post on my blog. I sold the rights to two of my photos to Zara, the only money I ever made from my blog. In this world, social media was just Facebook, Blogger, and Tumblr. It was a simpler time, and during that time, I grew an audience of 1,000 followers who were satisfied with one post a week, a paragraph of text. They left only positive comments, and everyone was content.

PART 3 - Me, you and YouTube

When YouTube was still in its infancy, it felt like a degenerate website for creeps, funny viral clips, and Vevo music videos. Then a friend of mine showed me Clothes Encounters, AKA Jen Im’s YouTube channel. Jen took the idea of a fashion blog and turned it into living, breathing, moving videos. Maybe she wasn’t the first, but she was the first that caught my attention. I was mesmerized. Her videos back then wouldn’t stand a chance in today’s social media landscape. In the early 2010s, there were no algorithms that buried your content if it didn’t get X amount of reactions in the first few seconds. People didn’t have the attention span of a fruit fly, and YouTube was a no man’s land being colonized and built in real-time by whatever creator was there first to plant their flag, regardless of skill or talent.

At 22, I had to join. I hit 1,000 YouTube followers that came in through my blog, and just like that, I decided I would quit my job and pursue YouTube full time. I can’t reiterate how delusional I was, but miraculously, it worked out. I started with vlogs, talked about veganism, made some outfit lookbooks, and then came sustainable fashion. The moment I learned how outrageously cruel the fast fashion industry was, my content shifted. Inspired by the anti-animal agriculture videos I was already watching, I made my own exposés of the fast fashion industry, my best-performing currently sitting at 1.5 million views.

I believe in being humble, raised in a thousand-year-old superstitious culture of gods ready to smite you if you brag about yourself too much. I always hesitate to praise myself for the work I did on YouTube, and I know I’m at risk of committing hubris, but fuck it. I’m proud of so many of the videos I made. I’m proud that my content was meaningful, educational, for a good cause. And yes, I’m proud I did it all on my own. I was one of the first making this content on YouTube and, for a short time, I dare say, maybe even the best. Go ahead, gods, smite me.

PART 4 - Don’t forget to leave a comment below!

I couldn’t talk about sustainable fashion forever. My interests evolved, the internet evolved, and so my video essay topics became less and less niche. Another thing evolved with me constantly: the viewer.

During the blogging era, comments were fodder placed at the bottom of the page, mainly consisting of phrases like, “Love this outfit!” or “I want those shoes! :)” I only remember getting one mean comment. Someone called me fat-thighed, and I never got over it.

Then my first viral video took off and my comments went from positive and encouraging to throwing me into a full blown panic attack. In the video, I talked about my experience working as a flight attendant for Emirates and the commenters piled on with vitriol and rage. There were no algorithms that blocked hate speech, it was the wild west - and women online bared the brunt of the verbal violence. Eventually, the hate trickled away, comments got positive and more thoughtful than ever before, for the most part at least, until 2020 bulldozed in. The gates of hell opened, plagues unleashed, lockdowns and black square boxes on instagram initiated the beginning of performative activism hitting the mainstream. Everyone was mad, isolated, and online. We blame the system, politicians, and the ultra-rich, but content creators are the public’s first line of attack. They’re the most visible and usually peacocking. It’s hard to resist; I get it.

My comment section became increasingly argumentative. Everything I said was or could be offensive and a sign of deplorable character. I’d feel anxious before posting, bracing for my inevitable cancellation every time. I censored myself, but no censorship ever seemed enough. No amount of trigger warnings or brain-numbing disclaimers made the mob happy. The online space turned from an escapist refuge for weirdos to freely share ideas into an Orwellian hyper-moralist, puritan, extra-critical, and overstimulating nightmare. I blame TikTok for this, but mostly I blame myself. I encouraged this behavior in my audience instead of shutting it down in its infancy.

PART 5 - That clock app

TikTok was love at first sight. How could it not be? An algorithm projecting all my personal interests straight into my retina, paired with a slot machine of bite-sized content, salacious fake info-dumping that’s too convincing not to believe, and outing me as gay before I even knew it (which was probably a little homophobic but also at that point necessary). This app is entertainment if entertainment were on crack: jumping out of a plane without a parachute, and everyone in the comments is agreeing that parachutes are problematic, crack is actually very good for your health, and all the negative press about it has been a racist conspiracy. I racked up hours every day on that app, self-diagnosing with ADHD and autism, watching people film strangers to “expose” their bad behavior, learning about pseudoscience presented as fact, picking up Gen-Z lingo that I’m definitely too old to be using, and overall subjecting myself to TikTok brain rot. I’m embarrassed to admit I even dated a thirst trap TikToker—not my proudest moment for sure.

Eventually, the clock app romance turned sour. This endless scrolling of a living comment section started to feel like a profound waste of my time. I couldn’t help but wonder:

Who were all these people in my phone, and why were they all yelling?

What did these trivial topics they so passionately talked about have to do with me and my life? Why did they matter?

Why was I giving up so much of my precious and limited time on this earth to strangers who are angry and mad all the time? Why was I letting them distract me from existing and experiencing the real world?

One day, after watching a video of a lady crying tears of joy/desperation because a dating app company was getting sued, I paused, cringed at what I had just witnessed, and deleted the app.

I was unshackled. Six months later, I can proudly say I don’t know what’s trending, I don’t know what the discourse is, what new thing is hailed as problematic, or the latest gossip. I exist independently of what is occurring on social media, and I can now confirm that ignorance is indeed, bliss.

PART 6 - The post internet era

So what? You deleted TikTok. You stopped posting on YouTube. You canceled yourself and had some “enlightening” experience about quitting social media. I like my chronically online existence, and the only reason you dare to judge it is because you have the privilege to enjoy the real world. - Some of you might be thinking.

In the sustainability world, we talk a lot about conscious consumption. Eventually, I think this mindset will expand to our relationship with the online world. Certainly not everyone, but a significant number of “users” will snap out of the video slot machine matrix and crave something healthy. In a way, we’ve already regressed to the blogger era. Back then, you didn’t have algorithms recommending content to you; you had to know where and how to find it on your own, and if you found a creator you liked, you stuck with them. Today the market is so oversaturated with creators that only the greatest masters of the algorithms make it to your feed. The problem with this is: content for the algorithm ≠ content for you. All we get now is bite-sized content from people we see once and never care to see again. We’ve lost that personal connection. For years I’ve been following creators like Venetia La Manna on Instagram, Contrapoints on YouTube, and The Red Scare podcast, but it’s been ages since I discovered anyone new that made me actually look forward to their posts like these do. We’ve regressed to only finding new creators through word of mouth, if at all, so perhaps this era of creators and influencers is over altogether.

For me, being an “influencer” has been a blessing and a curse. What a gift to earn a living by sharing what you love with others, work remotely, receive so much praise from people. And what a terrible thing to have to appease twisted algorithms and an overstimulated crowd that’s ready to start throwing tomatoes at you before you even go on stage. We’ve become clowns doing the same bit again and again because that’s now our “niche.” We’re mouthing lyrics off-sync like lobotomized housewives praying the trending audio gets us more views. We’re becoming bland and vanilla just to not offend all the chronically online hysterics desperate to victimize themselves. We’re mentioning Taylor Swift 24/7 to get clicks. Raises hand I’d like to excuse myself from this madhouse. My break from all this noise was therapeutic—as a creator and a consumer—it helped me reevaluate my online existence and hit a much needed refresh button.

And so I’m back and ready for something new, something slower and more mindful. I’m branching out to a new medium: Hello Substack, nice to meet you, I hope you don’t mind me embarrassing myself and unloading my guts all over this place. Cool, thanks… Unsure yet how much fun it will be doing this, but whether it was through writing blog posts, or scripts for my YouTube video essays, or Instagram captions, or my book (that I have yet to complete). This medium of putting down words and sharing them with others has been a calling I unfortunately can’t escape.

It also means not taking any of this too seriously. All of this, here, online, it’s trivial, a distraction from the mundane with more mundane, some useful knowledge, and a lot of horror. Nobody knows how to exist in here anymore. I definitely don’t.

I found refuge in the digital world, every skill I have was developed to help me succeed in it, but now I find myself feeling more and more like a relic from a bygone era, unable to keep up with it’s ever-increasing appetite for content. Yet, in moments like this, it’s so easy to forget that all you have to do is lift your gaze up from this glowing rectangle and the analog is always there, beckoning with open arms to join it.

-Kristen