Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It

by Kaitlyn Tiffany

it reminds me that something as beautiful as One Direction, brought to the internet, can somehow produce years of conflict and paranoia.

I’m nineteen and I’m not nineteen; I get to hold the two images side by side and think about the ways in which I’m changing and the ways in which I will always be the same.

This was a sentence that brought a realisation about myself upon me that I have been trying to put into words for years.

“Everything is set up against this idea of white straight masculinity, where the emotions are in control and the body is in control.”

Stan Twitter also began taking shape around the idea that young users did not have to use their real name or real images of themselves in order to participate.

In 2010, tech journalists circulated a claim sourced to one unknown Twitter employee that 3 percent of the company’s servers were employed solely to host activity related to Justin Bieber.

this is so funny to me, i screamed.

One Direction made me care about the internet. Time will tell if this was a blessing or the worst thing that ever happened to me.

kaitlyn ate up. slay.

There have been so many calls for empathy, inspection, and nuanced understanding on behalf of the angry men the internet has raised, but there have been far fewer for the fangirls whose beliefs are far more convoluted.

this made me real uncomfortable for a second.

They’ve been dismissed and despised, and now they’re exalted, but they have yet to be taken seriously.

I would have to go back to dealing with myself, which had been making me so tired.

ouch.