My Life VS The Internet: A Blog Post

Lately, I’ve realized that the internet is out to destroy my life. And not in the way that I’m popular or rich enough to get destroyed by someone stealing my identity. Frankly, I think if a hacker got into my checking account, he’d be insulted. It would be a waste of his time - the little money I have in there would be way under his hourly rate. No, the internet is destroying my life because I cannot stop checking it. It’s like my child is having surgery and I keep checking in with the doctor to see if he’s ok or not - except I’m never going to have time to have a child because I can’t have unprotected sex with my computer - YET.

My former roommate is great with the internet. She and the internet are in the perfect relationship. They hang out all the time, sure, but they’ve also got mutual friends they hang out with, too. She’ll tweet and facebook about some hip new trend, but then all that tweeting and facebooking will get her invited to some shmancy event and then she’ll tweet all about it and then those tweets will lead to more events and so on and so forth. Whereas I’ll have plans to hang out with a friend I haven’t seen in years, but my uber-controlling boyfriend the internet is all, “No, you’re staying home to watch these tigers eating pumpkins. That’s what we’re doing tonight.” A stronger woman would walk out on it, but I’m weak and lazy, so I reply, “Fine, but you better still love me when I’m fat.” And that’s when it starts pushing free online pilates videos on me. The bastard.

We’re in one of those relationships where I cannot function without it for more than twenty minutes. The last time I was on a job interview, the interviewer asked, “So, what news stories are you interesed in right now?” I stared at her for over a minute, mouth agape. I couldn’t think of a single thing. I had forgotten everything I just read! It’s like I hadn’t been checking Google News in days instead of minutes. It’s even worse with my friends. There’s no pressure to know political theory with your friends, but you do have to have a basic knowledge of what’s going on in the world. They’ll all be laughing about the hilarious thing some idiot politician said, and I’ll pretend to go along with it, but I’m really just thinking, “What’s going on?” When I get back to my computer, I look it up and finally get the joke. But my computer can’t laugh with me. I’m so inundated with information that I can’t actually remember any of it. The internet has turned my brain into mush, and someday it will turn it into liquid. I'm hoping for Kool-Aid, preferably cherry-flavored.

But at the same time, like in any bad relationship, there are things about it I love. My main obsession: Google Reader. It’s a website that conglomerates all the blogs I follow into one uber-website. A number on the sidebar of the site states how many unread articles I have. Basically, it’s a game I can never win. The goal: to read the entire internet, even the boring parts I don’t like - like “Tom Selleck Sandwich Waterfall,” which hasn’t been cool for months, or “Men Staring at Bricks,” which is just plain boring - just so I can see the Google Reader number tick down from 1000+ to 500 to 5 to 0. But just when I think I’ve hit zero, Gawker’s all “Snooky just had a threeway with Tiger Woods and a pineapple! You’ll never guess who’s the better the lover? Spoiler alert: it’s the pineapple!” And then the game begins anew.

Plus, GReader (or “greader”) has these folders which you can file articles you like into. So when I come across something called “10 Best Financial Tips for 23 year olds,” I can just put that article in my “financial tips” file and then never read it, but think that I’m super smart for thinking I should read it. I’ve got book folders, gift folders, vacation folders - folders for safety tips, home tips, green tips, health tips, self improvement tips, waiter tips. I think if someone who doesn’t know me just learned about me by reading what I have saved on my GReader, they’d think I was really smart, talented, well rounded, and handy with a monkey wrench. But they’d also be really jealous of me because I’d be super perfect. When they found out I’ve never even read most of those articles, they’d think, “Yeah, that’s about right.” Not disappointed, just a little relieved. I’m like one of those old ladies who cuts out coupons from thousands of catalogues but never buys anything. And I always thought those ladies were super crazy. But it just turns out they were testing the waters for the internet generation. Now we’re all those crazy coupon ladies. And I say, let’s embrace it.

Because that’s how we are - we want to know more and do more and be more, but that takes a lot of effort. And you know what doesn’t take effort? Clicking on the “things I want at my wedding” tab when I see that recipe for sour apple cream cupcakes. Because I’m not going to set up a savings CD anytime soon (is that a thing? I think that's a thing), but I sure as shit want to make sure I remind myself to try those sour apple cream cupcakes when I start planning for my wedding at some indeterminate point in the future (I'm not even engaged). The internet may be this fun-fact spouting boyfriend who’s only pleasure in life is giving me just enough instant gratification so that I forget that there’s a real world out there I could be contributing to, but isn’t it a little hubristic of me to think that I could actually contribute something meaningful to society anyway? Then I think about posting something meaningful like this on my blog, but I forget about it and post that video of tigers eating pumpkins. Because that’s super cute and super fun and what else am I doing anyway?