I’ve been on the internet my whole life. Is that a good thing? Debatable. Probably not, but I can’t deny everything I’ve learned from it, good or bad. All the friendships I’ve made that feel real despite not ever seeing each other face to face, it made me who I am. I’ve always viewed the internet as this huge monolith, bigger than anyone could possibly be individually. I thought that I would always just be lost in this monolith, which was comforting to me. Everywhere I go in this digital world there would be new people, and I would be a new person as well. I can essentially start over, these new people on the internet have no preconceptions of me, no idea of what I’m like, I can start over and, to an extent, build a new me. It was during the COVID pandemic where I made a lot of these early internet friends. I’ve certainly lost a lot of them over the years, but no more than the ones I’ve lost in the physical world. Eventually I wanted to throw my hat in the YouTube ring. I wanted to give what all that I had to this video sharing website. At the moment I have 1,813 subscribers. That’s a lot of people, but I still imagined that the internet, this monolith would still be too big for me to be found. So imagine my surprise when I join this voice chat in a discord server and someone says “oh hey, I’ve had your video in my watch later for a while!”
“Like, actually?” “Yeah, I looked at your profile and saw your YouTube channel.” “...” This was the moment the monolith shattered. Well maybe not, but it did in my mind. Out of billions of humans living on this earth, I had come across this one human in this voice chat, and they had seen me before. They were planning to watch this thing that I’d made. Me. It’s a strange feeling. I was mostly in awe, but more people ended up joining the voice chat and someone else said “Hey I think I saw that video too, let me check my history”. And so they did, and it was there. Some amount of months ago, another person in this voice chat had actually watched the video. Not just any video, MY video. My creation that I put out into this world, expecting a few thousand views at best. Looking back on it, it makes quite a bit of sense. This is the type of discord server that contains people who would watch a Half-Life challenge run. But even though I know that, even though I probably shouldn’t be shocked, I still am. I really did believe in the hugeness of this monolith. The city I live in has around ~800,000 people. Probability says that there will be at least one person in this city that has seen something made by me, some stranger that I may have passed by in the street that has seen one of my videos. I will most likely never know this stranger, nor will they ever really know me. We may never become acquaintances, but this stranger will be out there somewhere.
“It’s a small world” is something I never believed. The world is huge, 8 billion is a number that you cannot even visualise. What does 8 billion humans even mean? It’s an unfathomable amount. The world you interact with is small, not the world in its entirety. But maybe it's smaller than I thought. Practically anyone can access the internet. These billions of people from all around the world and I happen to just meet some, who are one out of about 90,000 views on the Half-Life video. 90,000 out of 8 billion is 0.00001125%, and I’ve just happened to come across these people. Of course the real percentage would be narrowed down from 8 billion, there are ~1.5 billion English speakers, and out of those ~1.15 billion have access to the internet, but even if the number were reduced further, it would still be tens or even hundreds of millions. It’s not pure luck; as I said before there are definitely other factors that make it a lot more likely. But something else I’ve been thinking about is:
Do I even want this?
If I continue using the “Bezray” name, this anonymity from other users would be weakened. Of course with ID verification and other efforts for “digital safety”, it’s becoming harder and harder to stay anonymous on the internet. But the government will be able to find you if they really wanted to. It’s still quite easy to stay anonymous from other internet users. I also don’t quite want to be recognised on the internet. The anonymity is why I spent so much time in this place, it made me feel at ease in a way. These preconceptions may be following me again, except instead of going to the digital world to escape them, they are part of the digital world, this monolith.
But I’m putting this upon myself, aren’t I? I could very easily make new accounts with no relation to Bezray. It would be starting fresh, which is ironically what I was longing for when I started using that name. But, really? Do I really want to? All of these friends I’ve built up on the internet. Sure I could just say, “go friend me on this new account” but the Bezray name would continue to follow me. What’s the point in going halfway? If I’m already putting in effort to try to change my internet persona, why wouldn’t I make sure it’s a complete job? But I don’t think I want to. “Bezray” is part of who I am. There is no way I would get rid of this YouTube channel, which is one of my most prized possessions ever. I would not let the last 4 years of that go to waste. And even if I keep this YouTube channel going while switching the rest of my accounts, even if I bring the friends I’ve made along the way with me, I just can’t. It would be like trashing everything I’ve been doing on the internet, everything I’ve been doing with my life for the past 5 years and counting.
I have always and will always be cautious about who I am and what I reveal on the internet. People seem eager to share everything about themselves on the internet, but I (like to think that I) am acutely aware of what that entails, especially if I want to go further with this whole YouTube thing. There are a lot of downsides to being a public figure. I’ve watched the downsides reveal themselves many times over. Being a public figure also has its upsides of course, but is it worth it? Because once you say yes to that question, there is absolutely no going back. “The internet does not forget” is a fundamental rule. You can fall out of the public eye, whether it be through some controversy or just by the passage of time, but somewhere on the internet there will still be a permanent record of you. You can try to erase the history, but there could always be some screenshot on someone's computer, some archive stored on some server, and you would never know if it could resurface until it does. Maybe one day I’ll put my face out there on the open web for one reason or another. Maybe one day I’ll quit doing YouTube forever and I will just be a miniscule piece in this unfathomably grand history. So many creators, some of them incredibly talented have not managed to find success on the internet. Is there a reason why I would be any different? It’s impossible to know before I give it a try. But all that we have is the present. And in this present I am going to stay “Bezray”, for as long as possible.
