I’d like to make one thing clear: I am all for the Internet. It’s special. I enjoy it. In fact, I don’t throw around the word “love” loosely… but I think it’s fair to say that I have romantic loving feelings for it. But one thing is for sure: It scares me. I’m in love with a monster.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how I used to get to know people, before the Internet or the new Facebook phenomenon. This would be in my early high school days. You’d meet a person, get to know them, hang out with them, talk to them, find out their genuine interests and see if you clicked with them face to face. Then I got MSN, and everything changed. I began to talk to people at my school I hadn’t even talked to in person, and still have not talked to in person. That seems wrong to me.
And now, with Facebook, you get to see people, and their mother, and their siblings, cousins and family dog before you get to know them. You know their musical interests without actually having a meaningful conversation about music with them. You know where they work and go to school. You know if you have mutual friends in common. In some cases, you know their political and religious beliefs. You know who they’re in a relationship with or who they’re married to. You may find out if they have kids. But the most you could have ever said to this person is “Hello”. You may judge this person before you’ve even taken the chance to get to know them. Why? Because we’re convenience-hungry beings. The information is just sitting there, waiting for us to read it. We like things done quick and fast, without hassle or wasted time. We’re constantly in a hurry and on the move. This seems to be a very North American thing. No where else in the world is fast food so popular and prevalent in the lives of us artery-clotted individuals.
But I won’t sit here and knock Facebook – there are so many things I like about it. Although at times I’ll be sitting here on my computer and suddenly feel like a lump of lard for being on Facebook or MSN for hours, it connects people. I have been talking to people I would have never been able to keep in contact with otherwise. As technology changes, it’s becoming much easier for people to talk to one another without a whole lot of effort.
Problems also arise with this. People talk to each other on MSN and it isn’t at all personal. Things can be misconstrued so easily. I have a problem with sarcasm, and people have stopped talking to me because they don’t understand the context in which I am saying something over MSN.
On a more serious note, the Internet has absolutely ruined some people’s lives. Online predators are everywhere, and the accessibility of the Internet to practically anyone makes it simple to destroy someone’s life. As a side note, has anyone seen “To catch a predator” on Dateline NBC? (Please refer to Youtube video). It’s great. The general basis of the show is that a police officer poses as a teenage boy or girl, and attracts an online predator. The predator then comes to the fake residence of this young person, and out comes Chris Hansen or whatever the hell his name is, with a can of whoop ass to be opened and injected right into that pedophile’s dirty veins. BAM – CAUGHT, BITCH. It makes me laugh when this loser tries to explain themselves. And the look on the dirty asshole’s face when he sees Hansen walk out (and Hansen always has a great punch line as he walks out, that always mocks them). Now THAT is good TV. And when they try to run away from the cops sometimes…Oh man.
So is the Internet a good thing, or bad thing, or both? Has it gone too far? Do the pros outweigh the cons?
wow. people are sick.