As a perpetually lonely child in the planned suburbs of Adelaide, I grew up on the internet. The first memory I have of accessing YouTube was waiting three days for my dial-up internet to load Vanessa Hudgen’s music video for Come Back to Me. It cost my parents a lot of money, but I couldn’t resist the pull of funny cat videos, Sims 2 music videos and early era TMZ. Before I learned how to read novels, I read trash magazines back to front. I didn’t know what a verb was but I could detail a blind item from back to front.
As a child, I was diagnosed with selective mutism and the only way I could communicate was through re-enacting celebrity drama I saw on the internet or television. I probably needed a therapist, but in the end it all kind of worked out?
