skittles
Member
- Joined
- Jan 12, 2013
- Messages
- 141
I dunno why I'm posting this here.. I definitely lurk here more than I post, but I've been lurking here for like seven years now. I guess this place kinda just feels like home to me. And home seems like the right place to share my thoughts.
I'm thinking of taking an indefinite break from the internet. Like, removing it from my house and going to a cafe or something if I absolutely need it. I don't have a smartphone. I don't have any of the usual social media thingies (although I circulate three or four subreddits and this forum). I've taken mini-breaks from the internet before - a week here and there. But for the most part, I feel like I've been staring at a computer screen since the 90s.
And although the internet is an amazing tool for information and communication and yadda yadda yadda, and you can learn anything on it, and watch movies on it and blah blah blah... for some reason lately, I'm just tired of it.
Do I really need to know everything? Do I really even care?
I feel like things on the internet are far too deep inside my circle of concern. Far deeper than things in my physical world that should clearly matter more to me. I'm tired of cycling through the same old things, reiterating things I already know. My threshold for what I find interesting or exciting has become too low: "oh, hey, something that I'm not very interested in, but maybe I could possibly find it interesting, because there's nothing else more interesting in my immediate vicinity". I'm tired of feeding my stream of consciousness into Google. I'm tired of getting a chuckle out of memes. I'm tired of this artificial need to be endlessly entertained.
I'm tired of trying to convince myself that I'm satisfied by the conclusion without the journey.
Refresh...
Refresh...
Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I miss the days when we had dedicated things, like books, and calculators, and watches, and written letters, and TVs, and CDs, and human interaction. Now it's like, everything happens through this one machine. Everything! And anything! And when you had a dedicated thing, it somehow made things more special. Back in the day, you didn't go buy every TV series under the sun, you only bought your favourites - the ones you'd re-watch over and over. You didn't waste your time and money on the rest of them because they weren't special. But now we just zip through something to get on to the next one.
I'm a music/audio production geek. These days, you can just torrent every plugin and virtual instrument under the sun. Click a preset. Next, next, next. But back in the day, you'd spend an assload of hard-earned cash on a fancy new synth. But you spent a lot of money, so of course you'd spend a lot of time with that one thing, getting intimate with it, experimenting with it within the confines of its limitations. There was something really special about that.
I even kind of miss the old internet. It was still available, but it was a hassle. You had to block up your phone line, and it was slow as heck. It wasn't very fancy or colourful, and it had obstacles that prevented us from obsessively checking back at the same junk or looking up random bits of trivia that come up in conversations. Often, you couldn't even find what you were looking for.
I'm getting off into the weeds here. I guess what I'm trying to say is - and I could be wrong, but - I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way lately. I think a growing number of people are getting tired of the internet, but they've spent so much time jacked in that despite wanting to escape, they have a difficult time breaking free from it. This machine doesn't bring me joy, it doesn't tell me anything I really need to know, and it eats up all my time. It makes everything less special. I feel like my life ought to be less 'out there', and more 'right here'.
The internet was introduced to everyone at roughly the same time, and we went through the big internet boom together. And a few decades later, we've seen, frankly, all there is to see. Will we collectively outgrow it?
This might just be my last post here. I'll miss you all.
See you on the other side.
I'm thinking of taking an indefinite break from the internet. Like, removing it from my house and going to a cafe or something if I absolutely need it. I don't have a smartphone. I don't have any of the usual social media thingies (although I circulate three or four subreddits and this forum). I've taken mini-breaks from the internet before - a week here and there. But for the most part, I feel like I've been staring at a computer screen since the 90s.
And although the internet is an amazing tool for information and communication and yadda yadda yadda, and you can learn anything on it, and watch movies on it and blah blah blah... for some reason lately, I'm just tired of it.
Do I really need to know everything? Do I really even care?
I feel like things on the internet are far too deep inside my circle of concern. Far deeper than things in my physical world that should clearly matter more to me. I'm tired of cycling through the same old things, reiterating things I already know. My threshold for what I find interesting or exciting has become too low: "oh, hey, something that I'm not very interested in, but maybe I could possibly find it interesting, because there's nothing else more interesting in my immediate vicinity". I'm tired of feeding my stream of consciousness into Google. I'm tired of getting a chuckle out of memes. I'm tired of this artificial need to be endlessly entertained.
I'm tired of trying to convince myself that I'm satisfied by the conclusion without the journey.
Refresh...
Refresh...
Maybe I'm just an idiot, but I miss the days when we had dedicated things, like books, and calculators, and watches, and written letters, and TVs, and CDs, and human interaction. Now it's like, everything happens through this one machine. Everything! And anything! And when you had a dedicated thing, it somehow made things more special. Back in the day, you didn't go buy every TV series under the sun, you only bought your favourites - the ones you'd re-watch over and over. You didn't waste your time and money on the rest of them because they weren't special. But now we just zip through something to get on to the next one.
I'm a music/audio production geek. These days, you can just torrent every plugin and virtual instrument under the sun. Click a preset. Next, next, next. But back in the day, you'd spend an assload of hard-earned cash on a fancy new synth. But you spent a lot of money, so of course you'd spend a lot of time with that one thing, getting intimate with it, experimenting with it within the confines of its limitations. There was something really special about that.
I even kind of miss the old internet. It was still available, but it was a hassle. You had to block up your phone line, and it was slow as heck. It wasn't very fancy or colourful, and it had obstacles that prevented us from obsessively checking back at the same junk or looking up random bits of trivia that come up in conversations. Often, you couldn't even find what you were looking for.
I'm getting off into the weeds here. I guess what I'm trying to say is - and I could be wrong, but - I don't think I'm the only one who feels this way lately. I think a growing number of people are getting tired of the internet, but they've spent so much time jacked in that despite wanting to escape, they have a difficult time breaking free from it. This machine doesn't bring me joy, it doesn't tell me anything I really need to know, and it eats up all my time. It makes everything less special. I feel like my life ought to be less 'out there', and more 'right here'.
The internet was introduced to everyone at roughly the same time, and we went through the big internet boom together. And a few decades later, we've seen, frankly, all there is to see. Will we collectively outgrow it?
This might just be my last post here. I'll miss you all.
See you on the other side.