2020 as a teenager (I had just turned 16 when COVID-19 first hit in March) was one of the most unique and irreplicable adolescent experiences of generations–for the best and worst reasons. I’ll mainly be talking about TikTok, the epicenter of connection, information, social hierarchy, identity, gatekeeping, FOMO, and discovery—the main things teenagers grapple with–just on an exponentially different level now. Even more specifically, the “weird/nerdy kids.”
I grew up always feeling a little nerdier or weirder than my peers. I watched Minecraft YouTubers and FNAF game theories, watched anime, and was an art kid. These hobbies and pastimes helped me understand who I was and how I fit into the world. I enjoyed being a self-proclaimed nerd and being around people who were, too.
Now that I’m 20, there are nostalgia posts, cringiest 2020 posts, quarantine trends, and similar things reflecting on the hyper-specific and unique trends during this time due to the nature of being in lockdown with social media.
For me, 2020/2021 was the alternative*, bright, oversaturated colors, gamer girl, Twitch era. This was also the height of my commitment to robotics, which had a very pro-nerd-computer-video-game culture. I built my computer, hung out with friends on Discord, and started buying and playing video games. However, I never fully committed to one video game, community, show, or hobby. I watched only a handful of anime, didn’t have a thousand hours in one video game, didn’t draw regularly, never made cringy gamer girl TikTok’s, etc. I know it may sound lame or weird, that I’m sad I was only 60 to 70-something percent loser and not 100. It’s not necessarily about the specific hobbies and interests; it’s the idea that I wanted a strong identity for something but didn’t have the energy to do it.
*Alternative as a way to describe fashion or lifestyle has many different interpretations and meanings. The following art created by u/Macneeb on Reddit is what I’m referring to.
…are posts from my Instagram from this time. The influence of bright colors and gaming aesthetic is apparent.
It was hard for me to keep up with school and friends, so all of the energy I did have would go primarily to robotics, then school, then friends. Even though most of my energy went into robotics, which would eventually pay off, I still felt I needed to do more. Seeing the more popular, athletic kids have multiple hobbies and friends had the same effect as seeing the nerdier, less social kids having multiple hobbies and commitment to fewer friends, did.
Feeling like I could have—or be doing more—for something, from academic achievement to personal fulfillment, has always been an issue. I never entirely give my all to something, even something as silly as a niche internet culture. This could turn into a commentary about a ‘productivity’ driven society and how we expect such intensity and investment into even non-work related things such as hobbies and self-care. Although I don’t deny that argument wholly, I have a different take on my issue. My addiction to phone and social media, affected by and further influencing my mental health and mental state, drives my productivity and drive for everyday life into the ground.
Being open, I have struggled with depression and crippling anxiety since middle school. Fortunately, as I’ve gotten older, I have become more comfortable with myself and left environments conducive to such mental states. However, the depression can often fluctuate. The habits from those states were usually medicated with low energy, comforting actions such as consuming media (TikTok, YouTube) in a desolate space. This is how I wind down, relax, fill empty time in my day, and do all of the above without thinking. It’s natural, comforting, and horribly draining. When filling your brain with such empty time, it depends on constant interaction and stimulation to feel not lost. I play a YouTube video while doing chores, look at TikTok anytime I’m bored and just want to relax, etc. I won’t deny the effects social media and media consumption have on the majority; however, I will say it is precisely what a depressed brain wants. Depression and motivation are essential concepts in productivity and “bed rotting.” Depression hinders motivation and productivity, and is essential to differentiate from laziness. When you don’t have the energy or the natural process to motivate yourself, you feel lazy and are self-aware because you don’t want to be that way. While it may seem obvious to say just get up or just do it, there’s a certain dread that comes with everyday actions that are subsided with sleeping, social media consumption, and video games. You feel lost and drowned when you’re not being stimulated with thoughts that aren’t yours. Those stimulations aren’t solutions; as I said, they simply subside those feelings of dread. The solution comes with not only letting go of temporary exits from reality but also letting that dread get a whole lot worse before it gets better. And when you’re in that state, the idea of it getting worse for even more than a day when you can numb it for just one more day is a hard decision you feel like you have to force yourself, and often feel too weak to make.
All of this is to say that I’ve often felt like a poser to my nostalgia. I’ve often framed myself as lazy, uninteresting, or boring because of this process, which I’ve failed to recognize the extent of. It’s weird because I’ve never fully cared that I liked weirder or dorkier things; it’s more that I didn’t like them enough. Depression is important to understand because it’s a balance of not blaming or belittling yourself for why you do it but also needing to acknowledge it and come to terms with that; eventually, you will need to decide to fight it. And it’s a cycle; once you’ve acknowledged it and are willing to fight it, you have to not blame and belittle yourself for how hard it is and if you are weak while fighting it. But you also have to decide to keep trying and talking to yourself about what is happening. I’ve chosen not to see these memories as time wasted. And that view took a lot of work and trial and error to achieve. Because my commitments paid off, and I accomplished a lot in high school. I was battling something I didn’t even know the full extent of. A great way to understand this is that I’m often labeled a pessimist, though I see myself as a realist. There is this view of existential dread that shadows my lens on life, but it doesn’t seem like a filter or altered perception to me; it’s just what I see. And that can be frustrating between two people with and without depression, or even two people with different kinds of depression.
Writing this alone was a challenge for me. It resonates with the things I’m still going through today, and there was a certain point in this writing that I felt stuck in. I chose to, however, just keep writing. Keep writing, and if it gets worse, I’ll leave it, and it’ll just be a rant. But by pushing myself through where I got stuck, I made peace with what I understood and knew all too well just one more time, and I’m ready to move forward again.
Thank you for reading.
“Just try again tomorrow. If a day wasted can ruin everything, a day saved can fix a lot.”
O-Ryan's Blue-Jay 
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