I stumble in stage left, taking my new surroundings in with confusion. And then I see you. But it isn't really you, is it. Probably not any version of you that's familiar with me, anyway. With trepidation, I prepare another introduction.
"Hello...um, everyone. My name is Josiah Fernandez. I've been online for, uh, twenty(?) years now. I emerged from my pond of Humongous Entertainment and Backyard Sports as josiahtoad, a reference to the second Canadian children's television show I had become obsessed with while living in Miami. I don't recall doing much under that name, apart from some instant messaging with IRL friends. Actually, there were also some incredible games on the Disney XD website that I would spend some time playing.
But it wasn't until about 2006, while living in Georgia, that my cyber-life started to become a life of its own. It was around that time that my Bionicle obsession led me to sign up for a Lego Club Page as shadow1909, "shadow" as in Shadow the Hedgehog and "1909" as in "keep clicking recommendations until it gets approved". By the time my Lego Club Page was inducted into My Lego Network, I had become metalshadow1909, an evolution courtesy of some...traumatic scoliosis treatment. By the time I was twelve years old, two versions of me had ceased to exist.
I decided to put the mayfly act to an end, and lived as metalshadow1909 from that point on, and live I did. I migrated from not-so-Hotmail to gmail. I joined Facebook, realized I hated Facebook, and signed up for Twitter, which suited my undiagnosed ADHD much better. Honestly, I probably should have been on tumblr, but I only realized that much later. Which is embarrassing, considering I was just entering my fanfiction era.
I'm only just now realizing my torrid love affair with fanfic began while while a certain Snowqueens Icedragon was publishing her Twilight-based smut. Thankfully, I was lightyears away from Fifty Shades, in the totally innocent and wholesome world of Sonic the Hedgehog fanfiction. And as much as I'm playing it as a joke, for a good while, I was reading slightly gritty freedom Fighter slogs and rollicking Back to the Future crossovers on niche websites with small communities. And then I discovered fanfiction.net, the realm that birthed the Snowqueens Icedragon herself, and I learned what shipping was.
Unfortunately, I was more concerned with loss than love. Could you blame me? I had moved nearly a thousand miles, cyber-died twice, and nearly been murdered by my own spine. In 2012, my senior year of high school, I took to FF.net and channeled my grief through Miles Prower. I signed up for Spotify and buried myself in the post-grunge wave that had just passed. I started work at Taco Bell. I threw a few AMVs up on Youtube. Occasionally, I'd seek the solace of photography, posting pictures to Instagram. I'm told 2013 and 2014 happened. I don't recall. Then, the next year, I was hit by a defibrillator.
On March 16, 2015, Bioshock Infinite was offered for free to Xbox Gold subscribers. It would be the last game I ever played on my Xbox 360 before upgrading to an Xbox One. It's a story about falling victim to, and ultimately breaking free from cycles of trauma. It resonated with me, and while I'd continue battling depression until I had the wherewithal to seek medication, I wasn't nearly as dead as I had been. It wasn't until a few friends joined the Xbone club, however, that metalshadow1909 would be restored. Together, we earned our sense of pride and accomplishment in Star Wars: Battlefront. We fought the Fallen in Rise of Iron. We stanned for Battleborn!
Eventually, my love of Destiny led me to Reddit, the true source of all Destiny news. I also threw in with the communities of Agents of Shield and the Arrowverse, and of course, the Xbox and Playstation communities. I had a few good years. But as my beloved shows ended and games began demanding an amount of time only the streamers could devote, I watched the home I had found fade away. Unlike my previous experiences, there was no new platform to jump to.
Or so I had been led to believe. But, behind a veil of advertising dollars, work was being done to free the Internet from the corporations that claimed to be the only actors in that space. For nearly my entire cyber-life, the IndieWeb movement has been building a framework to allow Internet users to maintain control of their cyber-life and literally own whatever you do online. At the same time, work on the ActivityPump protocol led to the rise of ActivityPub and decentralized social networks such as Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Friendica (among others!).
In 2017, I started work at Sherwin-Williams, and a new, more socially acceptable cyber-life was born in josiah1909. In a misguided bid to join a gaming clan, I foolishly left the Xbox gamertag of metalshadow1909 behind. When that community collapsed weeks later, I was without an identity. But I couldn't go back to being metalshadow1909. The platforms that he still existed on had enshittified their algorithms, and being metalshadow1909 was an exercise in being fed to the Internet's most titillating vice. In 2020, as I took leave from those who couldn't be bothered to believe in science, I received the strength to confront the problem head-on.
I attempted to kill metalshadow1909. Twitter account closed, over a decade of tweets deleted. The solace of Instagram, shuttered. Facebook closed. The plan was to keep only my gmail,gaming, and Spotify accounts, wiping everything else. I would avoid corporate platforms like the plague they had become. But non-existence became unbearable. I would return to Twitter and Facebook eventually, taking on my Xbox identity of Mornixu Bane.
Not long thereafter, Elon Musk bought Twitter. When he first announced his intentions, I found the move interesting. But as time went on, it became obvious that what he meant by "free speech" was "free hatred". Not being about that life, I searched for an alternative platform to jump to, which was when I, like many others, became aware of Mastodon. Technically, I was part of the mass migration, but I had moved back to a dumbphone and ended up not using my Mastodon account much.
Then, of course, came the Fascenning, and a mad scramble to escape the subservient eye of Big Tech and it's surveillance. I got rid of my Xbox account, my Google accounts, and while I still exist on Spotify, I'm looking to change that. I've become an Easymode Cyberpunk, leaning on open-source software projects and solutions to get by. And I've gone back to the social web, but not the one built to enrich shareholders. Over the past year, I've been Mornixu_Bane@mastodon.social, watching as the United States are picked apart wholesale to enrich the ruling regime, trying to gain enough of a knowledge base to build a space where compromise with facists isn't a prerequisite to maintaining a cyber-life.
As I find myself at the precipice of that moment, carried along by the better angels of the Internet, it occurs to me that the identity I've been using was one such compromise. One made in fear of algorithms that were designed to drown me in my poor choices.
But they are no longer in control in this new space. I am. I have the ability to construct my new home as I see fit, and I now have the power to reclaim that which they stole from me 'ere these five long years! My name is Josiah Fernandez, and I have been, and ever will be, the unkillable metalshadow1909!