virtual suicide
"What happened to the good old days, when you'd get to know someone before reading their myspace profile?"Somewhere circa 19931, right around the time I hit puberty2, the not so newly invented computer landed its large monitor just left of the TV and right of the kitchen in a new nook termed the “home office”. Unlike its technological cousins, CD players, cell phones, etc. purchasing a computer had little to do with movin’ on up3. The computer wasn’t an upgrade. The new Dell PC didn’t present like frivolous valet parking or salon shampoo, rather it was the T-I 844 calculator- a snazzy but justifiable necessity. Now computers had been standing around for years4, but they didn’t seem to matter until America Online went public. Baby world wide web was just 3 years old when internet became the season’s new must have. And it was a must have, launched during a naïve and innocent 1993, a time when 2000 was touchable and yet there were still visions of tin-foil clothing and flying cars dancing in our heads5. By 1994, over one million Americans subscribed to AOL. I was one of ‘em (or at least my parents were- I wasn’t even old enough to drive yet).
During that first summer, chatting with friends became a solitary endeavor. I’d sit in my pajamas, blue light reflected on my cheeks, entertaining friends from North Carolina and California and Massachusetts and Alaska. I’d laugh and sometimes cry, find myself enraged and sometimes in love with conversations which cascaded down my screen. I quickly learned how to maintain these friendships with a whole new set of rules. Typing quickly, working on my wit, I improved my response time and thus my friendships. It turned out to be a successful skill, as right around that same time, my high school teachers began requesting all papers be “typed”. This exhausting process involved hand writing the whole paper and then sitting down in front of the computer to “type it”. Fortunately the invention of those plastic protruding paper holders, which clung via Velcro to side of the monitor and dangled the original manuscript along side of the screen buffered the task.
During this transitory period, opinions about technology were as explosive as internet itself. Old folks usually shuttered when they felt like they were “losing it” even faster. Children, with expansively adaptive natures, delighted when they played with the new “toy”. Adults struggled to stay “hip” when they mastered (ever so slowly) the search engine. Amongst the kids in the hall, the ones my age, 2 types of people emerged: those who embraced the computer and took rapidly to its advancements, and those who stopped at Oregon Trail, pretending the new technology would just go away6. By the way- I’m a type oner. I got through most of my adolescence with the guidance of google, I learned to play guitar from guitartabs.cc, and I formed relationships via instant messenger, with the emotion of my entire day teetering on the tone of particular away messages posted by particular friends.
Although I’m not too sure what the kids are up to these days, I can reminisce with my generation and the rhythm we possessed. Just old enough to appreciate things like Atari, floppy disks that were actually floppy, and mix tapes, while never “learning” to use new technology. Instead, it seemed to develop right along side us. Regardless, for someone such as myself, who sometimes is just too plain lazy to get up from the couch and use the bathroom, I can't help but wonder why I put forth the effort of investment.
Mostly likely, it was because I had to. When the internet developed, people responded- not because it was futuristic or cool or interesting or even efficient, rather people responded because the internet developed as a social tool. It became necessary for social survival. It became modern evolution. Those that shunned the computer were missing out on new relationships, improved communication, and more generally, they were ignoring a whole other dimension of daily life—the virtual one.
Now I admit, I’m no columnist. So I’ll bring this right back to me7. It was, of course, a recent event in my life which forced this heavy realization and philosophical inspection. I found myself, very seriously, contemplating… suicide8. I woke up one morning after a virtual rejection9 desperately wanting to disappear, and then I realized I could actually make myself disappear. One tap of the mouse over one small square “delete account”. It wasn’t until I found myself debating the repercussions of my potential action, I realized the gravity of the internet. Asking myself questions like:
what will I tell everyone?
Do I inform my friends first?
What will they think when they find my page gone?
What will I be missing?
Will I be missed?
produced a delusional and quasi-suicidal state. I found that when faced with the actual “are you sure you want to delete your account” pop-up, my pointer finger couldn’t find the muscle tension to mouse the “enter” button. I hovered over the screen for quite sometime before I chose the “cancel” option. And I did “cancel’” quite a bit in that moment. There in my virtual self, I could see the evolution of my real self.
1. the same year parents gave “calculator” watches for Christmas and 4th grade math teachers everywhere had to patrol the classroom for misusage of the dreaded "calculator"
2. irrelevant, but true
3. to the east side
4. think DOS
5. well, I guess we weren't too off... there was that Brittney Spear’s video.
6. yea, really. I’ve actually heard this line, “I think the internet is just going to go away”
7. clearly that’s where this was headed
8. Whoa- wait a minute, please read on before notifying the officials
9. I was “not approved” by a potential myspace friend
posted by d @ 6:35 PM
3 comments
