I Saw the Computer Glow: Growing Up Online as an Unhatched Trans Teen

Jane Schoenbrun's I Saw the TV Glow and We're All Going to the World's Fair speaks to my experience growing up online as an unhatched trans, nonbinary teen

Credit: The New York Times x Adryan Corcione

I saw the long-awaited I Saw the TV Glow last week. I was especially excited for this film, since I'd enjoyed a previous project called We're All Going to the World's Fair with similar nostalgic themes by the same director, Jane Schoenbrun.

Notably, both films are set in a previous time without smartphones where we "went" online, usually on a desktop instead of a smartphone. In the same era, we didn't have on-demand streaming capability, so we'd have to tune in for new episodes at a specific time and day.

What better week to discuss a previous time in media than the week my guest episode on

Nicstalgia

drops! Friend of Adryan's POV,

Nicole Tremaglio

hosts a video podcast on music, pop culture, and the internet with a nostalgic twist. In this episode, we discuss my memoir project about growing up online through early stage social networks. As a homage to Nicole’s Physical Media Renaissance™ episode, I also show-and-tell my Lindsay Lohan print magazine collection! You can watch/listen to the episode on YouTube as well as on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Nicole is also a cultural theorist and writes the Nicstalgia newsletter. Her work explores how pop culture, media, and technology impact individual and collective identity. Visit her website to learn more!

It's an honor to be on the show because my friendship with Nicole reflects the work I'm doing on my newsletter: commenting on pop culture of then and now as well as building online connections along the way. For my memoir project, I've been revisiting my time roleplaying on Xanga. I found Nicole last fall while researching for my memoir project. I was curious of who was still talking about Xanga on YouTube, which lead me to her episode, My Fav Internet Era: AIM, Xanga, Myspace.

Now, back to TV Glow and World's Fair.

If you haven't seen TV Glow, Autostraddle film critic Drew Burnett Gregory summarizes it well: 

"I Saw the TV Glow is about Owen (Justice Smith) who we fall through time alongside from 7th grade (played then by Ian Foreman) until somewhere well into his adulthood. He’s a quiet kid who loves his mom and fears his dad. He doesn’t share the interests of his peers — except 9th grader Maddie (Brigette Lundy-Paine) who loves a fantasy show called The Pink Opaque that Owen isn’t allowed to watch because it airs after his bedtime. Oh and because his dad says it’s a show for girls."

When Gregory interviewed Schoenburn for World's Fair in 2021, Schoenburn explained their then-next film (TV Glow) was written during physical months of transition. It was "about the egg crack," or the moment in a transgender person's life when they realize they are transgender.

Similar to Schoenburn and even the lead actor Lundy-Paine¹, I didn't come into my trans identity until my adult years. Growing up, I had very little understanding of my gender or even sexual identity. Yet still upon my first watch of TV Glow, I still projected myself onto Maddie. It wasn't until sitting down to write this essay where I realize my emotional experience mimics that of prepubescent and teenage Owen.

Middle school into my early twenties, I often was disconnected from my feelings. I often felt alone, anxious, and sad, even in the company of others. It was easier, and quite frankly, safer, to not acknowledge the feelings existed.

Feelings of angst, embarrassment, shame, sadness, and so forth are universal to all humans, not just trans people. What is trans-coded, however, is the longing to escape and connect with others. In her Letterboxd review, Sally Jane Black writes:

"I didn't live inside a TV show; I lived inside MTV, Internet forums, high fantasy novels, Final Fantasy 6, and tabletop roleplaying games (an instant tool for shared experience). The eternal contradiction between needing to escape into oblivion and not feel all the terrible things that surround you and the need to connect with others and feel the few good things that you ever get to feel goes deeper than simply being trans, but it is undoubtedly terrifyingly common amongst us."

Owen's world was The Pink Opaque. My world was the internet. Specifically, as a young adult navigating an eating disorder, complicated family dynamic, and emotional aftermath following a traumatic event at age 14, high school roleplaying on Xanga was my world. In roleplaying communities, my recurring character was Alexa Hawkins. Although she was still a girl, she was a girl I'd always wanted to be: confident, successful, and loved by many.

I never told anyone in-real-life about the roleplay, so I carried tremendous shame. I chased fictitious teen romances in the RPG while I watched my peers experience real-life romance. Yet, desperate for authentic social connection I didn't have among peers, I saw the computer glow. Escaping into the internet, or even my underground niche community, isn't exclusively a trans experience, but it is a trans-coded one.

This is where my experience overlaps with World's Fair, where teenage protagonist Casey becomes immersed in an online creepypasta-inspired role-playing horror game while alone in her bedroom, wherein she begins to document the changes that may or may not be happening to her. "Casey watches videos of other participants that range in grotesquery," Gregory describes in Autostraddle. "It’s unclear from the beginning if Casey understands this is a game, or thinks it’s real, and I felt unclear as the film went along if I understood it was a game, or if I was starting to think it was real too."

Though the relationships within the roleplay were fictitious, aside from the handful of internet friends I talked to over AIM out-of-character, they were still relationships that felt real to me. In the roleplay, I felt the social connection I craved outside of it. I could be my authentic self as my character, as Alexa, when I otherwise I hid my authentic self from my peers, family, and everyone else offline.

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1. Following the screening of TV Glow, I had the pleasure of attending a Q&A with Lundy-Paine, where they explained despite sharing similar gender feelings as Maddie, they still maintained emotional distance because Maddie's trans story wasn't theirs, because Lundy-Paine transitioned in their adult years. In 2019, they came out as nonbinary, according to them.