Not Quite Zooming
December of 1999, the tail end of the last millennia. I came to existence as Thailand was going through an economic crisis. There's a VHS of Dad using 2 mobile phones at the same time. We had a Windows ME PC in the shared bedroom. My early childhood was photographed with a silver 2-megapixel camera.
We moved to a house when Mom had my sister. A small townhouse with 3 bedrooms and a front yard in which we still live. The computer sits in front of the kitchen, running Windows XP. I played pirated Popcap games and posted my Sims 2 screenshots on a Thai forum. Dad had taught me to not reveal any personal information such as my age. It's a good advice ā there were men proudly announcing their love for lolis in the comment section of anime news pages. We had home internet, but not always, and I had to apply for middle school at a local internet cafe.
I got my first "smartphone" in middle school. It was a Samsung tablet. I had a rubber tip stylus I'd use to draw digitally. Bundled with the tablet was a phone running Bada OS. I'd load some local MP3s onto that phone. I remember in particular listening to Radiohead's Paranoid Android during one school day's end. I learned Actionscript in my computer class. I bought a couple albums off iTunes store. I had a Tumblr blog. My favorite YouTube channels were PewDiePie and Smosh.
In high school I was using a 2011 iMac dual-booting some version of OS X and Windows 7. I took the role of video editor in every single group project. I played Sims 4 and The Binding of Isaac: Rebirth. I had signed up for Line Messenger a couple years after most people my age. I was talking to IRL friends on Twitter. I torrented Kraftwerk's discography on The Pirate Bay before I got introduced to Soulseek. One of my classmate brought their Nintendo Switch to school and it got stolen.
First year of university was also the first time in ages that Thailand had a general election. Social media had taken off in Thai society, and a new party called Future Forward took full advantage of the changed information landscape, becoming the second most popular party at their first go. I shared (still do) a Spotify family account with my friends. I got an iPad on my second semester of my freshman year. Everybody else also had one. My current laptop came later.
At some point I stopped withdrawing my entire bank account and started paying for things via QR codes. At some point that became the norm. At some point Line became an everything app. At some point my sister begged for an iPhone before she does a gaming laptop. At some point we almost lost Nan to Covid. At some point I downloaded Tinder and went on a shitty date. At some point Gran started sending me AI-generated greeting messages every day.
At some point, I stopped looking at technology with fondness.