I had a online journal on and off as a child. It was a place of intrigue and refuge. It was anonymous. I don't recall sharing it with other people, and I don't think I was under any impression that anyone read it. I liked to imagine people might read it (intrigue), but I was also, simultaneously sure, that no one would (refuge).

I miss that feeling. The internet was a vast yowling void. My pre-teen concerns about sleepovers and complaints about finding the boys in my hometown unimpressive were received into the void, eventually deleted by me or perhaps the tanked online journal platform, I can't remember which.

Now the internet feels like a threatening place. A place where any information you share is either going to be sucked up as training data, a liability, or evidence subject to undue scrutiny.