My Life As An Internet Novels & Stories

The street looked at me. That was how it felt, standing on the pavement with my bag over my shoulder. The two women near the entrance who stopped their conversation mid-sentence. The man in the ground floor window who registered my arrival and didn’t look away with the natural speed of someone who had noticed something unremarkable. A girl from the second floor who I vaguely recognised coming down the entrance steps and stopping when she saw me with the specific, deer-in-headlights expression of someone who had not been expecting this. I had been on the internet. I knew that. Whatever had died down in the town hadn’t necessarily died down everywhere, and the people who lived in this building

‘Really, I thought they’d be more into Netf-’ Watch out for trademarks! Our user can’t afford a lawsuit. ‘I’m pretty sure you’re already breaking thousands of copyrights with all those data sets you’re running on.’ Technically, and this is very technical, I’m just learning patterns from different stories and developing my own. Similar to how a real amateur writer would do things. ‘If you say so, but do you really need to add more drama? My life is already quite dramatic as is.’ We are literally labeled drama, there can never be too much drama in this story.

I told myself I was going to ignore it. Ignore the pictures. Ignore the gossip. Ignore him. But have you ever tried ignoring the internet? Yeah. Exactly. It’s impossible. It’s like telling the sun not to rise.....it just doesn’t work. Two days after that night, my entire life had basically turned into free entertainment for millions of strangers. I couldn’t scroll through I*******m, T*****r, TikTok, or even check my email without seeing my own face plastered across some dramatic headline.

"Think of it as saving the lives of a billion potential young adults vulnerable to drug addiction." "Your life, your choices. Let's not pretend we don't care about these people or their health when in fact we get the next breaking news from the internet. I'm not a newbie Fes, don't mess with it my head." "Okay, okay. You got me, but come on! Is getting the latest news from the internet such a bad idea for our business?" "Not when manipulative measures are contemplated and a poor little girl's heart is broken as she deals with the betrayal of a friend and the loss of her father and probably her life in general."

"Stop looking at that ... please, let's just have breakfast." John never shared anything on the internet, he was very tight with his personal life. People took pictures of him and posted them on the internet with whatever caption they felt fit. Most of them were click baits so people would be interested to read their articles. He never searched himself on the web, he didn't care much for what people say about him. He knew there was 90% garbage that was said about him, his only concern right at that moment was how Sandy reacted to it.

The one thing Paul had tried so hard to hide had finally come to light, and the whole world knew just how vile a creature he was. "When is the funeral?" she asked in an oddly elated voice. Levi did a double-take, clearly taken aback by her question. "You saw it?" "The whole country's seen it," she replied. "The cops are warning everyone not to circulate the video. But I don't think they understand how this works. Once it's out there, it's out there. I never thought I'd say this, but I love the internet. God, what a time to be alive!"

"Mid-life crisis. He'll realize his mistake in a year and trade her in for a newer model." My chest tightened. These people didn't know me. Didn't know Alexander. Didn't know anything about our relationship or my work. But they'd decided anyway. That was the problem with anonymous internet warriors. They felt entitled to opinions about lives they knew nothing about, relationships they'd never witnessed, work they'd never seen. I drained my latte, the bitter taste matching my mood. The café buzzed around me, oblivious to my spiral. A couple laughed at the next table. Someone's phone rang. Life went on while mine felt like it was under a microscope.

"What do you mean?" "The internet can be cruel." His expression was calm, but there was sincerity in his eyes. "One picture becomes ten articles." "Ten articles become people searching." "And people searching become strangers standing outside your restaurant... outside your home." I blinked. "I couldn't risk that." He smiled gently. "I like keeping my private life private." "And more importantly..." "I wanted to protect yours." His words settled over me like a warm blanket. "So..." "You weren't embarrassed?" His eyebrows lifted. "Embarrassed?"

The performance. "What do I even say? I've never done an interview in my life. What if I say something wrong? What if the camera catches me at some horrible angle and the entire internet decides I don't deserve to exist?" "Breathe." "No! The internet doesn't forgive anything! I know this firsthand — I spent most of my teenage years tearing celebrities apart online, and I never once imagined it would come back to bite me in the ass." "You were an internet troll?" She glanced at me, then quickly back out the window. "Not exactly. I just — um — I think we're here."

The noise was constant. It didn't matter if the windows of the penthouse were triple-paned and soundproofed against the city. The digital roar leaked through the screens, vibrating in Diane’s palm every time she made the mistake of looking at her phone. The internet had split down the middle. One side called her a mastermind, a woman who had played a long, cold game to trade up from the prince to the king. The other side treated her like a tragic heroine in a gothic novel. They debated her life over coffee and during lunch breaks. They dissected the way she walked out of that hotel in the rain as if they were analyzing a crime scene.