The Awesome Power of the Internet
There are days when I am pleased and impressed with the internet and appreciative of the ways it enriches our lives. I get updated information on all of the cultural happenings in Prague that any of my friends are going to, so that I can later pretend to have been there. I keep in touch with people halfway around the world, except not so much really – sure, it’s easier than writing a letter, but I’m so lazy I don’t even send e-mail that much any more and when you think about it, that’s really pretty fucking lazy. And, of course, I am glued to Internet news, drawn like a moth to a flame. Once I realized you could leave comments, print newspapers were dead to me. Why should I get news from any source that doesn’t let me talk back? Screw them.
Then there are days when I find the Internet to be the harbinger of an evil and dangerous future. Today was one of those days. My favorite website, Wonkette (if you haven’t read it, you should. there’s some truly funny stuff there) just introduced a new comments system and to say there were some glitches on the way is an understatement. I was emotionally ready to commit violence and the distance and anonymity of this world wide web proved to be its saving grace.
In any event, I was reminded once again of all the negative aspects of the internet. First, this global village thing: there is no south sea island/mountaintop retreat/Siberian dacha so remote that your greedy ex wife/people you barely knew in high school/the law can’t find you. But then, there are the other little things that let you know that the Internet is an evil entity out to control the world. First, why do all the addresses start with www? Perhaps I’m being alarmist, even hypocritical as my own initials are WW, and this is not at all an unusual combination, but it still always makes me think of WWI and WWII and so when you add an extra W, somehow in my twisted mind that translates into WWIII and if that happens, we’re all fucked and the robots take over the world just like in the terminator movies. Moving from the prefix to the suffix, you have .com at the end of everything, and doesn’t that sound a bit COMmunistic to you, COMrades. I mean, out of all the possible 3 letter combinations in the Latin alphabet, they had to choose that one. Coincidence? I’m not so sure.
Then, of course, there is that one button which, for me, is the clincher. Before you make a comment, before you make a purchase, before you sign up to get an e-newsletter, you have to hit that button that says….submit. You must submit to the internet, submit to the global mind, submit to the global mediocrity which will, slowly but inexorably, consume us all.
Resistance is futile.
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