The hell of online baking advice

Before deepfakes and alternative facts, the online world was already telling us fibs. In our series Lies the Internet Told Me, we call 'em all out. I was having four panic attacks a day. And they were not short. I sat at my secretary desk in my bedroom in a Manhattan apartment my wife and I just moved to, and I did almost nothing while I felt the waves of adrenaline crash around me, my body behaving like the ceiling was caving in, even though everything was, ostensibly, fine.  Except it wasn't really fine. I'd come out as trans. I’m trans masculine, nonbinary, and I use they/them pronouns. At the time I figured it out, I was an almost 30-year-old adult, situated in a queer community with a gay wife and a family-of-origin that’s gotten used to me being gay for 8 entire Earth years. I was living in one of the most reputationally liberal places in the United States, with affirming work environments to boot. I’d watched friends around me navigate the process of figuring out their gender identity and then communicate it to those around them, effortlessly and effectively with few consequences from those they cared most about. Read more...More about Lgbtq, Baking, Lies The Internet Told Me, Culture, and Identities