Is The Internet Performance Art? Tinx And Maya Man, Two Digital Creators, Discuss
Maya Man, artist and internet anthropologist, and Tinx, The New York Times bestselling author and digital pioneer, talk about life online, what it means for girlhood, and how to lead a career online while maintaining sanity.
By Maya Man
Photos by Anna Koblish
Published
When we first began brainstorming for the Freaking Out issue, we knew the internet would have to be a throughline. It’s the backdrop of every mental spiral we have. It’s the instigator of 9/10 meltdowns. It’s a low, slow humming that drones on in the background of our daily lives. In the last five years specifically, leading a hyper-online career has taken on new meaning: Screentime has become meaningless. Why minimize our hours logged if we live there, anyway? It’s sinister. It’s productive. It’s uniting. It’s divisive. And yet, here we are, writing this for our online publication.
And so, who better to talk about life online than two women who have built their names and careers by way of online personas and mastering a keen understanding of internet behavior? Here you have it: a conversation between Tinx, the digital creator who began this chapter of her career as TikTok’s big sister in 2020, and Maya Man, an artist whose work is inspired by the very behavior of hyper-online individuals. While they function differently online, Tinx and Maya share a language. Below, they use it to dissect what it means to live online today.