On the internet as creature
The thing that we call “the internet” is obviously not just a technology but what is it? Some make sense of things by referring to it as a virtual space—an endless room, a portal to another dimension. This analogy doesn’t quite do it for me, though. The internet might have once been a place, when we went on it with computers in certain rooms of the house, but now it is with us everywhere and even when we leave it, it is with us not only on our phones but in our heads. Given this, I am starting to feel that the best way to imagine the internet is as a strange, complicated, compelling, destructive creature with whom we all now have an intense lifelong relationship, whether we like it or not. (The picture above is taken from a book I found on Amazon called Miteus and the Internet Beast, which is about a boy who “likes to stay on the Internet in his Tablet and disobeys his parents, but he will meet the Internet Monster and all this will change.” Available for purchase on Kindle for $2.99).
¶
We really do spend a lot of time with this creature. And it makes sense because they (I won’t presume a gender) offer us a lot in return. They are endlessly helpful, first and foremost. They teach us things, entertain us, help us remember, take us places, give us access to ideas and people and new friends that we’d otherwise never encounter. But it’s more than that. The creature keeps us company. They keep our secrets, and we share with the creature our most perverse desires. They are so dependable, always there, any time of night. They come with us to the toilet in a party and help us calm down and take a few minutes before going back out to the humans, who, in so many ways, are so much harder to interact with than the creature, because they won’t do exactly what we tell them to. We love the creature for this reason. We appreciate that creature. We like the world we’ve made together. Thank you, creature, for spending so much time with us.
¶
But also, I guess you, creature, are quite demanding of my attention. And why do you show me things that you know will upset me or distract me from what I’m supposed to be doing? Why can’t you seem to be able to let me have a break? Why do you make it so hard for me to set boundaries? And then when I do try to take a break and have some time to myself without you — like even just one weekend, or even just one afternoon, or even just one night — why can’t I do that? And when I can’t do that, and I come back to you, bring you into bed at 3am, why do you make me feel so bad about myself for it? That it’s my fault? That I’m somehow weak? When really you have made me feel that I’d be irrelevant without you, that I’ll lose touch without you, that I’ll lose my friends, that I’ll somehow disappear from the world unless I’m with you always.
¶
And on a separate note, creature, why do you make me jealous of your relationship with other people? Why do you reward others with endless love and popularity while I never get enough? And why do you make me feel like if I just spent more time with you, made more effort, was a little funnier or hotter or meaner or more creative, then you’d reward me like you reward them, that you’d finally love me fully and give me everything I ever wanted (endless love).
¶
And I think I would love you and embrace you as thoroughly as others do if I didn’t have this feeling that if I did you could turn against me, take everything away seemingly arbitrarily, or because of some thing I did a long time ago that you somehow bring up now and show to the world, turning me into the enemy of the world for a day. And at that point, you would have total control. I would see my redemption as only possibly through you. I’d be fully dependent, entirely malleable, willing to shape myself, my opinions, my beliefs, my desires to suit whatever it took to be loved again. I would forsake my friends and family publicly just to impress you. I would attack others mercilessly in your name. I’d change my entire personality to get on your good side so that maybe I could become, if only for a day, your chosen one.
¶¶¶
In other news: I haven’t been writing here as much as I’d like because I have been very busy with work. I’m going to try something a bit different. I will try to write weekly, which means that sometimes these paragraphs will be very short. Maybe only one paragraph long. I’m reading Michel Houellebecq’s Atomized, also known as The Elementary Particles. I thought this essay by Jean Garnett in the Yale Review on living with envy as an identical twin was insightful and good to read. The Wikiquote page of Emil Cioran, a Romanian philosopher who wrote books with titles like On the Heights of Despair, is adequately bleak and beautiful. I got a kitten called Pico who loves listening to this ambient album called Crystal Waves by David Casper.