As a side note, I decided to see my blog stats, just for fun. No surprise, I don't have many visitors. Definite surprise, I have visitors from Russia, Poland, and Latvia. See, check it out:
So... hello Russia, Poland, and Latvia!
This is a great segue to what I've been wanting to write about for nearly two months. The Internet. It's a pretty amazing technology, really, that lets you connect to anyone anywhere in the world. I've been able to watch evolve over, I don't know, the past 22 years. Although it's not uncommon for a 28 year old to be very familiar with the internet in the US -- or other countries for that matter, as the Olympic opening ceremonies artistically demonstrated, and young activists have proven through Twitter and other social media outlets -- I think the only thing that makes me somewhat more like the generation behind me is that I grew up with a computer in the house. Not many friends of mine have had quite the same experience, having acquired a family computer in their pre-teen to teenage years. I was introduced through a Commodore 64 and whatever came immediately after it (I know it was some Apple product). As much as a child can manage, I became familiar with Microsoft DOS before computers even had a picture based interface and you had to use some fancy combination of keys to do anything at all; and games required multiple floppy disks and were extremely simplistic. I was fascinated, whereas a youngster the same age today would be bored out of his/her skull and unimpressed. If you read on, you get to see how involved this all became.
Thanks to my parents appreciation of technology (Ham Radio and the original Star Trek probably helped), I was introduced to computers at a young age. Consequently, I was also introduced to the internet at a young age, starting with Prodigy and then graduating to AOL. There's a combination of nastalgia and annoyance every time I hear the unmistakeable sounds of a modem connecting to the internet. Even back then when the internet wasn't considered a dangerous place for children as it is today, my parents were very cautious of my using it. My dad had very basic but strict rules about chatting, such as never responding to A/S/L (age/sex/location) and even steered me towards IRC (or Internet Relay Chat) -- with the handle of SpunkyKid, since my dad's handle was Spunky (after Rocco's dog in Rocco's Modern Life). It could be that my dad lead me to IRC because he personally knew a lot of individuals on there (they were Ham Radio friends of his) and also because he could track down IP numbers to find out who was talking to me and go back and read logs if he really wanted to. I wound up spending a lot of time on the internet while my dad was working during the summer, making friends and playing games. IRC eventually introduced me to my first internet "relationship" when I was 11, if you want to call it that but it wasn't really. But we moved to a different state in 1996, and the interest dissolved entirely.
Moving to another state, and consequently another school, seemed to push me further into the Internet world since I was shy and had a hard time establishing friends outside of school for a period of time. I stuck mostly to IRC rather than AOL, though I eventually succumbed to Instant Messanger. My brother was the same way but he was (and is) much more internet savvy than I was, and we navigated through one of the first multiplayer gaming platforms, MPlayer.com when it was offered for free. I had the handle of DragonWing. We were obsessed with Quake primarily where I alternated between SpunkyKid, DragonWing, and cRaZy; but there were so many other games besides just that and there was a chat platform there as well. Eventually I ended up in an actual online relationship with an older kid in Connecticut: we wrote letters to one another, talked on the phone, and chatted online endlessly into the night. That abruptly changed when he announced he gained a girlfriend in "real life." My brother and I also got involved in MUCKs (Multi-User Created Kingdoms) and MUDs (Multi-User Dimensions), which are text-based roleplaying games, and I all but abandoned MPlayer.com except to play Quake. MUDs are structured and dealt with points, whereas MUCKs are kind of a freestyle form of roleplaying where you get to create your own characters and write stories with other players. I prefered the latter, because it opened a world of imagination and fueled creativity. Some MUCKs were based on TV shows or video RPGs (such as many different Anime shows, or the Final Fantasy games), others based around fantasy like dragons, wizards, and the like. Between IRC and a MUCK called Alfandria (which still exists), my handle as Zalyina became my entire identity -- you can read all about it in my post, "Avatar :: Zalyina," where I explain that I really ended up believing that I was a dragon soul trapped in a human body. Eventually I hopped the bandwagon of Anime and the MUCKs associated with Anime and RPG (primarily Final Fantasy) themes, and created nearly a dozen characters. But Alfandria was still my homebase. At this point, I had a full blown obsession, or what could easily be called an Internet Addiction -- and this was all through high school. I would stay up late at night, or sneak onto the computer while my dad was sleeping during the school year. I would stay up until 7am during the summer. I would throw a fit when I thought my brother was on the computer too long or when my dad barred us from internet access, outraged at perceived injustice that I could not talk to my friends, the only ones who really understood me. They were people that I loved and cared about -- people I had never met in "real life" and had no chance of ever doing so. I had friends in school that I cared about too, others who didn't seem to fit into a clique. But there was something about the internet that my friends could not compete with. "It was my safe place to go when things simply didn't make sense. These people didn't want to hurt me -- for, as far as I know, they all suffered much in the hands of others as well. This digital world and their avatars were (and for some, still is) their safe place, where they can be who they think they are and escape the realities of a war-torn world."
Needless to say, it was unhealthy. Of course I never saw it. The emotional experiences and connections were very real to me. When I became a Christian my Senior year, that's when my ties to the internet started to strain, primarily because I no longer held the same beliefs as those of my dearest friends in Alfandria. It's also when I actually wanted to connect to real people, the people who I could see face-to-face and establish real connection. When I got to college, I had no time to really go bounding around the internet, and it gave me a legitimate chance to connect with people: new people, new friends. It was like starting over.
Because I know how being so deeply entrenched in the Internet affected me psychologically, I have been very cautious and even critical of the Internet since I stepped out of that lifestyle. While in truth I do miss writing stories and the creativity that MUCKs offered, I know how positively addicting it can be. I don't even really like to chat through Instant Messaging anymore, and placed myself on invisible on Gmail to avoid it. Social Media has only complicated my relationship with the internet. When Facebook first came out while I was in college, I was excited about it and connecting to my other college friends, and those I had met on retreats, or staying in touch with a few friends from High School (I only joined MySpace at the end of college to connect with a new friend I met at a concert, who eventually became my husband; you can ask me about that another time). I didn't have a cell phone until college, so it only made sense to stay in touch through Facebook. But I don't really like what Facebook has become, this megalith of social media giant that literally wants to integrate itself into every aspect of your life, if you let it. It's proven to be just as dangerous as any other Internet outlet for addiction (http://www.uib.no/news/nyheter/2012/05/new-research-about-facebook-addiction as one example, I'm sure there are several others). I hate how I can see what old friends are up to, who I haven't spoken to in years, because it makes me feel jealous and yet feel compelled to find out about their lives. Twitter I'm sure can be just as addictive (I generally avoid it); but I see the usefulness in both tools. I see how it can update friends if you are ill and unable to make tons of phone calls. I've read articles about how it's connected adopted children to their birth parents and relatives to one another. But as a whole, I am still wary of it.
I'm wary of children and teenagers' access to the Internet, because of my experience. I don't think that kids will think they will get sucked into unusual beliefs (but certainly I know it happens). Of course there's the worry of being exposed to all kinds of levels of pornography and violence on the internet, a topic that is well discussed and argued about and researched for a good reason. I'm worried about how the Internet affects their social development and overall communication skills. I've known so many college kids who prefer to email or text or send messages (over Facebook or IM) to sort out problems, avoiding face-to-face confrontation. I know how easy it is to think you love someone who have either never met or have very little interaction with face-to-face. It also has a huge impact on writing skills and abilities. The internet also seems to give irate, opinionated people to an avenue to say horrible nasty things and attack their opponents, like a hornets' nest that's just been kicked. But many of the people who do that would never say such things to someone's face; the internet is their shield and spear. Internet and text based hazing/bullying comes out of this, which literally can be fatal to those who otherwise have found the Internet to be their safe place, especially young people. It easier to attack and be hateful towards someone you don't have physical interaction with (another example of this kind of interaction is cursing out other drivers on the road and rattling about how one thing or another was totally idiotic).
Actually, this isn't just children and teenagers; this is for adults too. The Internet (and really, texting over the phone) -- for all it's usefulness and incredible tools to connect people to one another -- it can be a breeding ground for incompetant face-to-face relationships and human interaction and it dehumanizes opponents in conflict.
I'm also wary of the Church utilizing the Internet and Social Media as a means of outreach, and especially as a means of replacing a physical church body. But that's really a topic for another time, since this entry is already long enough!
As much as I hold the Internet at arm's length and hold social media with caution, I do fall into Facebook holes and YouTube holes that eat up productivity. There are many useful things about the Internet, and to the dark side there is a light side. Unfortunately, the good and bad go together because it's not so much the Internet that ought to change (although, some aspects should), as much as it is the hearts and minds of people. That is a much larger task.
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