daydream up a trip to the shit filled sewers

Wrote this a while back. It'll be 'internet wednesday' or something like that.

As I was trudging through the tundra to class, I overheard two young ladies seriously debating something I never thought possible. The discussion broke out when one of the girls claimed that the other's 'relationship' wasn't official until they both changed their status on facebook.

Perhaps I've come across something very grave. This is the great continental divide for web-based networking. On the one side, I stand facing west, ready to flow majestically into the pacific. I will live peaceful like a river otter, cutely cracking nuts (or whatever it is those little monsters eat) on my belly as I lay on my back and lazily float the day away. Behind me stands this young woman facing east, trolling down the dirty Missouri to the muddy waters of the Mississippi and out into the polluted Gulf.

This girl clearly weighs her life spent online equally with her actual life. How can this be? I remember when there were debates raging (and sometimes still do) about video games and their effects on the youth. I brushed this idea off very easily because I knew firsthand what it was like to fall from a height or to be hit with something large and heavy. It hurt like hell. I knew the distinction between the real and the imagined because I lived in both worlds. Transformers and Voltron and Thundercats where all my friends when I imagined flying around through space to distant worlds. The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were there whenever I wanted to daydream up a trip to the shit filled sewers.

On the other hand, when I went outside and played in the woods or the creek near my house, my friends were the neighborhood children. My red headed cousin would visit every summer. We would have a glorious time and almost every day would come home with a new set of bruises or cuts. We were stupid fucking kids.




This girl, her friends are the people she knows from school and her other friends are her online friends. The problem is that there is no separation, her real, live friends contact her through text messages and online chat. Her imaginary friends and her real, physical friends are one and the same.

That continental divide earlier is no figment of my imagination, it exists. Perhaps I'm the youngest of the older generation and she's the oldest of the new. Maybe I'm tied up in there more than I think, maybe none of this even makes sense and I'm a fool for bringing it up. There is a difference between her and I, though. I see the internet much like I viewed those cartoons and played those video games, as if they exist in another realm. A realm of bits and bytes and internet titties. This is good and healthy, or so it seems.