and another thing: THE INTERNET IS REAL LIFE
Fuck everyone like this (second comment on the Emily Gould article, “recommended” by 123 soulless idiot readers):
This is not life. This is an electronic box on your desktop connected to numeric transductions of the thoughts of “the public”. … Turn off the computer, drive to Coney Island and jump in the ocean. Cleanse yourself and start all over again. You won’t be missing a thing.
THIS IS LIFE. Cells are nanotechnology. Brains are machines. And the internet connects people and their thoughts. If you are alive, and you spend time using computers and speaking to people by means of computers, that is life. WHAT ELSE COULD IT BE?
The ocean is great. Computers are great. Now we have two great things. But our friend here would prefer we had just one. This sentiment is just poisonous. I cringe even thinking about the mind that could have conceived it. Apparently, if I spend my day g-chatting with my loved ones, I’m not experiencing life. But if I walk around the block while talking on my cell phone to those same people, perhaps about Coney Island and the ocean, then that’s life. (What about Skype, though?) If I spend my day reading blogs on my laptop in my apartment, then I’m not experiencing life. But if I print out those blog entries and read them in Coney Island, the sound of the ocean all around me, then I can finally say I’m truly alive.
The whole computer “relationship” concept is so anti - human … regardless of those who would sell it as some sort of way to “interact.”
Don’t you think that interaction should be only used as a term for real human contact?
Dear Emily, What a sorry little cyberworld you chose to live in. Do you have a real life as well? or is this all you have? You are just a stupid little girl. Go watch the sun set and grow up!
The role of the Internet in creating a false sense of intimacy [me: HOW IS IT FALSE? MUST TRUE INTIMACY COME ONLY FROM CONVERSATIONS IN BARS AND RESTAURANTS, BUT NEVER CONVERSATIONS ONLINE?] among strangers is old news. The blogging epidemic strikes me as the height of self-indulgence, without any real regard for the common good. There are other, more graceful and enduring forms of self-expression — but maybe even the novel, like scripted TV, is on its way out.
Go see the ocean. Real human contact. Go watch the sun set. Write a novel like people used to do. DO THEY EVEN HEAR THE SICKENING NOSTALGIA IN THEIR VOICES — THE RETROGRADE(also, anti-semitic) INSISTENCE THAT WHAT WE REMEMBER WAS WHAT WAS BEST? There is a whole fucking world of wonders coming into existence and ALL THEY CAN THINK TO SAY IS WE’D BE BETTER OFF GOING TO THE BEACH.
