MEMEHUNTER

Metablog

Surfing around other blogs just now. Curious. A lot of Spanish. Quite a lot of politics. An awful lot of introspection. I heartily suspect that it is the introspection inherent in a diary or blog that may link it to depression (see earlier). I get the impression from some of the entries that people are trying really hard to sound maudlin, as if it makes the project worthwile. I mean, there's this one, where the pretty colour scheme and the smiley face of the blogger don't really match the title. Then again, some of her posts are pretty serious. Then there's this particularly scary example (which, worryingly, has the same colour scheme as mine). This guy offers 5 posts and then stops on June 3rd (my birthday...). Hey, hang on. In the last few minutes he's posted again. Thank heavens, thought he might have done something drastic. Not cheered up much, though. Poor guy.

I think possibly people should be encouraged to talk to people, rather than type their problems into the ether. I suppose the hope is that someone with similar problems contacts you and you form a sort of kernel of support, gathering more and more like minded people from across cyberspace, drawn over your expanding event horizon by the virtual gravity of your very own emotional singularity. Oh yes, I am king of metaphor. Anyway, then you can form a "support group" and all sit around feeling miserable and propping eachother up. Maybe you could all form a sort of hierachy of misery ("this week's most miserable is... ") so that the least miserable has to support the weight of the entire group, while the particularly despondent (yet oddly satisfied) individual at the other end of the scale props no one and can rely completely on the support of his or her entire network.

I mean, I know I'm one to talk. More than a few of my posts are a bit introspective. I imagine there's more introspection to come... but I just don't think that's what the internet's for, really. Not that I propose to know what the internet's actually for. I suspect that question is similar to asking what a tree is for, or a cave painting, or a rabbit. I mean, what it is is a wonderful and unprecedented ocean of information. A breeding ground for memes of all shapes and sizes. It's a new communication medium, an entirely new species of thing , the likes of which humanity has never before encountered. Is it any wonder, therefore, that we have absolutely no idea how best to use it? See the hysteria with which the notion of "internet crime" is greeted. See the reaction of people to the realisation that identity on the internet is entirely fluid. See repeated attempts by governments to regulate, to legislate something that actually trancends traditional notions of space, boundary, maybe even time. China tried to firewall their entire country. It's amazing. Of course, given that it is also a new medium for communication and given that humans are extremely social animals, we're going to try and communicate through it, but as yet no one really knows how best to do it. Flinging things into the information superhighway and hoping that someone's going to come to your rescue seems a strange way to go about it. At least to me.

But then, what do I know? I'm a hopeless twenty-something with no job, no partner and no idea where I'm headed.

Sigh.

posted by Memehunter @ 4:10 PM