Michael Sun

Open up your phones.

You have permission.

open any app and show the person next to you the first thing on your feed.

You might be surprised at how strangely vulnerable the experience is and also how surprising the results are.

I mean, this is how I found out that my partner's TikTok feed was 90% musical theatre content, which made me question all my life choices.

But ignoring that, looking at your phone and looking at someone else's feed

can help us bring back the randomness of the early internet.

Think back to me and Tommy, for example.

What we shared was a random fleeting encounter which couldn't have happened anywhere else but online or at any other time but the early internet.

That phase might be long gone, but we can still bring back the emotional high of spontaneity, of discovery.

So go forth and be crazy again.

Go and have your heart broken by some guy who lives three continents away from you.

Go and discover a corner of the internet previously hidden from you.

Go and be a tween online again and go and turn the clock back to 2008.