background/interest/research
My interest for this project came from a fascination with the early internet and its culture, which is experiencing a resurgence in popularity almost 20-30 years later.
While the internet evolved over time, significant changes have occurred, yet some experiences remain universal, albeit using different content. Reflecting on my own discovery of the internet at an early age, I realised that I spent a considerable amount of time online, communicating with friends or sometimes strangers virtually.

The nostalgia I felt made me think about the “good ‘ol times”, when surfing the web felt more free compared to today, but it also had an underlying dark taste to it. The unfiltered web hosted many scary and disturbing images which could easily pop up in front of a child and shape their worldview forever. Many people are aware of the dark side of the internet and the bizarre things lurking behind another hyperlink or a pop-up on a shady website. Yet, terms such as Vaporwave and Y2K have become trendy and gained significant interest in recent years. For example, Google Trends data shows a significant increase in searches for “Vaporwave” and “Y2K” aesthetics over the past few years, indicating a revival of interest in early internet culture.
My personal experiences as an unsupervised child on the early 2000s internet were translated into diary entries, forming the basis of my project.

[Screenshot google trends for “y2k”]

the medium/development/design process
The project was realised as a VR experience, created using Unity and the Meta Quest 3 VR headset. It is a 25-minute journey touching on various themes such as gore, pornography, catfishing, talking to strangers, grooming, mental health issues, and more. The diary entries are recorded and paired with visuals to support and deepen the exploration of these topics.

Collecting footage, 3d models, images, memories:
Sourcing enough 3D models was challenging. I focused on old technology and video game models to capture the essence of early internet culture.
Many websites from that era have either shut down or evolved, complicating the archival process and acquiring screenshots of sites I visited. For instance, rotten.com and omegle.com, known for their controversial content, have been shut down.
I searched the internet for artefacts of early internet culture, also delving into my childhood memories and searching old harddrives to find relevant material.
Most of my fellow students are around the same age and had made similar experiences browsing the web. Talking to them helped me realise which of my experiences were more common or unique. I received help from friends and fellow students to gather enough images for my gallery scene. Their assistance and engaged discussions greatly enriched the project’s development.

Writing my diary entries turned out to be the most challenging part. The core of the stories I wrote always held some truth and stemmed from personal experiences. However, I left out many details, allowing the audience to interpret them in different ways or maybe even relate to them better. Many of these experiences can be quite universal, especially for those who also grew up with the internet from an early age.

The decision to not make the experience interactive was crucial to ensure it did not feel like a game, even though it may look like one from the outside. The user should immerse themselves in the VR film and have the sensation of seeing old media and fragments of the past with brand new technology that we could only dream of back in the days – a VR headset.

The lack of interaction also made the experience accessible to a broader audience, including those intimidated by new technology or uninterested in interactive media. It was a good compromise for appealing to multiple generations, not just Millennials or GenZ.

progress/intermediate presentation/installation/intentions/exhibition

The exhibition space was designed to represent a 2000s teenager’s bedroom featuring a lot of posters, chunky technology, old gaming consoles, and period-appropriate furniture.
The whole experience was not only presented through a VR headset but also an old TV, allowing the audience to see what was happening inside the headset. The live footage from the VR headset was mirrored to the TV, along with the audio.
A child-sized chair with an old-school Cars design served as a mobile seat for the person wearing the headset, enabling them to turn around and inspect the entire scene in 360 degrees.

Exhibitions and conclusion
In the intermediate exhibition, the first five minutes of my diary entries were presented, allowing me to test the technical limitations.This phase was crucial for identifying and resolving issues before the final exhibition.

For the final exhibition, I addressed many of the initial issues and redesigned the digital experience a bit, went for fewer 3d models out of performance reasons and extended the surrounding real-life scene.

The audience often reacted strongly to the storytelling and personal experiences, with visitors expressing shock or deep contemplation. The project successfully sparked numerous conversations among attendees, fulfilling the project’s aim to raise awareness and provoke thought and dialogue. In conclusion, this project sheds light on the early internet’s nature, offering a nostalgic yet critical lens through which you can view its impact on childhood and personal development, either individually or as a generation.

an outlook
A setup with one VR headset made the experience somewhat inaccessible, resulting in a long queue. Since reducing the duration of the experience is not feasible, I need to make it more accessible, either by providing more headsets or by using a different medium for viewing. An optimal solution could be a WebGL export. While less immersive due to the absence of a VR headset, which blocks out the real world and enhances immersion, it would make the experience more accessible to a larger audience. A lot of people dislike wearing VR headsets for various reasons, so a web-based version would increase the potential audience. The work would no longer be tied to an exhibition space where the headset is hooked up to a PC running the right application; it could be viewed from everywhere in the world, from the comfort of one’s own home. A web version could still be incorporated into an exhibition space, combined with the VR headset and in the setup of a teenager’s bedroom, maintaining the immersive and nostalgic atmosphere.

more pictures:

diary entries/scripts:

Scene 1 | 2 girls 1 cup – wormhole

When I was in 6th grade I remember when another child in my class wanted everyone to see one video. A video that I believe many people my age know about – “2 girls, 1cup” – the unofficial name of a pornographic scat movie where two women defecate into a cup and then seem to be consuming its content, taking turns while doing so. That kid in my class passed around their phone as the video played and was forcing the other children to watch it even if they didn’t want to.
No, the teachers did not know what was going on. This was around 2009 and this was how the video went viral Pre social media.

Some people like to kiss,
Some people like to hug,
Some people like to eat shit out of a cup

Scene 2 | a catfish – colorspace sphere

Dear Diary,
Today, I want to write about something that’s been on my mind for years. It all started when I was 14, the age when everything feels intense and new. That’s when I fell in love for the first time. He was older, which I found exciting, and we just clicked. We had so much in common, and talking to him felt like the most natural thing in the world. We’d spend hours on end chatting, losing track of time. I remember one night, we were on Skype for 36 hours straight. It sounds crazy now, but back then, it was magical.
We never said those three little words, but we didn’t need to. It was like we both just knew how we felt. We had even made plans to meet up in person. But life had other ideas and he had always an excuse at hand. We rescheduled many times, he never showed. I remember feeling so lost, wandering around in the city, trying to find him while I noticed a group of friends suspiciously whispering nearby. But he wasn’t there.
As time went on, it happened again and again. Each time, I felt a piece of my heart break a little more.
Eventually, we stopped talking altogether. It was like he vanished from my life as suddenly as he’d appeared. Years passed, and just as I’d almost forgotten about him, a mutual friend reached out to me. They told me something that shook me to my core: he was actually a she.
It was like everything suddenly made sense, yet left me with even more questions. How could I have been so blind? How could I not recognise it was a female after hours on call? How could someone pretend to be someone else for so long? Why didn’t she just tell me? But more than anything, I felt a strange mix of sadness and acceptance. The person I thought I knew so well was someone entirely different. And now they are a stranger to me again.
It’s weird how life works sometimes, isn’t it?

Scene 3.1 | Habbo Hotel – gallery section 1
I spent most of my time playing a lot of browser games on our family computer. one of which was “Habbo Hotel”; a virtual online world and chatroom that let users create a personalized character, dress it up, and explore virtual rooms, while interacting with items and engaging in conversations with other users.

I made a lot of friends there and talked to them on there every day. We built rooms, played mini games, and shared endless chats. Habbo users often create guest rooms which emulate real world businesses, like police departments and banks or other establishments. Some of our creative endeavours however involved arranging furniture to construct bedrooms. Those would be left without windows, (because windows would have cost coins, and you could only obtain ingame currency by spending real life money). We would lay down on those beds and type out the kind of messages which would get filtered.
Words such as sex, boobs, penis, fuck, shit, all got filtered and converted into one term. Bobba. This was a unique filtering system unlike others, where the words would get censored and replaced by asterisks.
Many people would just insult each other and it just spit out Bobba. You don’t know what exactly they wanted to say, but the context made it clear. Eventually, Bobba itself became some kind of insult.

I joined groups of users who regularly gathered in those online rooms. I thought they were cool people who I became friends with and eventually, I moved some conversations elsewhere. We told each other our real names, I would send selfies and was hoping for one in return because I wanted to know what my friends looked like, too. I was catfished this way many times. Some people didn’t want to show themselves or felt too insecure about their appearance, so they would steal someone else’s pictures and pretended to be them. And you know what? Sometimes the pictures they used were of someone of a different gender.

In 2012, concerns about the site arose and were covered on Channel 4 News. A two-month investigation found users posting pornographic and violent messages – despite the fact that Habbo was marketed for early teenagers. A reporter posing as an 11-year-old girl claimed that explicit sex chats were common within minutes of logging on to the service, which she described as “very sexual, perverse, violent, pornographic.”

Scene 3.2 | Tumblr sad girl – gallery section 2

Blogging played a massive role in the early days of the internet. Before social media dominated the landscape, personal blogs were the homes of personal expression for many. Platforms like Geocities, Blogspot, and Tumblr offered the tools and space to create your own corner of the web where you could share anything and everything that piqued your interest.
For me, Tumblr was where I found my niche. I spent hours selecting the coolest pictures to reblog and curating posts that truly reflected who I was and what I loved. It wasn’t just about sharing content; it was about crafting a digital representation of myself. I even took it a step further by choosing preset blog themes that changed the look of my website. Through this I became interested in coding and learned HTML and CSS to add quirky mouse cursors and give texts a rainbow effect when you hovered over them.
But as I delved deeper into the Tumblr universe, something shifted. My posts began to more reflect my inner struggles as a teenager. I found solace in sharing my feelings of sadness and despair, connecting with others who were going through similar experiences. It was like a virtual support group where I could be my true self without fear of judgment.
However, amidst the sea of shared pain and solidarity, there was a nagging question: how serious were these struggles I was blogging about? Is self harm really that bad? Would you usually get help in that situation? I told no one. it became my secret. It’s easy to find comfort in online communities, but it’s far more difficult to confront the harsh realities of mental health and self-destructive behaviors.
I found myself wondering about my online friends—did they find the help they needed? did their battle with depression and despair spiral out of control? The line between virtual connection and real-life consequences became blurry, leaving me grappling with the weight of uncertainty. What if I never read about all these things you can feel. What I weren’t exposed to all these posts?
In the end, being a “sad Tumblr girl” was both a source of comfort and a haunting reminder of the fragility of life and how the things we see and experience affect us, online and off.

Scene 3.3 | gore and porn and disturbing images
No story

Scene 4 | Facebook -black space tea party

Dear Diary,
Recalling the moment I ventured into the realm of social media at the tender age of 12 brings a mix of both nostalgia and caution. Back then, I only created a facebook account to be a farmer on FarmVille. I saw my cousin play it and it filled me with excitement. Gardening has always interested me. I recall spending my pocket money on digital upgrade materials. I eagerly extended my virtual social circle to include strangers from all over the world, all in the hopes of exchanging materials in FarmVille. Among these virtual connections, one stood out: Sandra, a girl from Germany. We started chatting every day. She somehow took the role of a supportive elder sibling in my online world. Our interactions deepened as I entrusted her with personal details about my life, and I even attempted video calls to further solidify our bond. One day she agreed, but did not know if her webcam would work. Even having a webcam or built in camera was considered a luxury back then. However, when we started the call, I had left my innocence shattered, when an unexpected glimpse of an older man flickered on the screen before me instead of sandra.

At this point this person knew too much. “I will send this to your family” “Do what I say” “Do you want your friends to see what you did?”
Naive as I was I…
I should have reacted differently
I should not have done this
I ignored him
Dont give them the attention they want

This unsettling encounter served as a reminder of the dangers lurking behind the seemingly innocuous facade of our online personas and interactions. It instilled in me the importance of exercising caution when navigating the digital landscape.

—> u get a cookie