In Which I am Briefly Grateful for the Internet

I spent a goodly part of yesterday lying back on the couch, staring into the middle distance, considering the possibility of Giving Up–on what exactly I have no idea, but it seemed to make sense at the time. I’m tired of feeling sub par and not being able to leap up and take a good long walk around the park, or even plank, which heretofore I have always hated doing.

I could have picked up a book or something, like hide everything on Facebook, but instead I went through and systematically deleted all my old blog drafts. Basically I wake up in the morning, write something in Notes, work on it for a while, and then plunk it into WordPress. There it lives for the rest of eternity, its half edited germ sitting around cluttering up Notes. Took me an hour of just hitting Delete over and over to clear out the ruble . While I was doing that I noticed that a lot of my blog posts are me complaining about Facebook and other kinds of Internet Stuff. Looks like for years my favorite thing has been to blame Facebook in particular for ruining all the parts of my life that I don’t love best.

I mean, I don’t want this to count as any sort of repentance. I am Not rescinding any of my complaints. But while I was methodically pushing Delete, and glancing over the last two years of complaining, I was chatting in Facebook Messenger with several different people who I would not know at all had it not been for Facebook and Twitter.

Now, before you get all huffy about the importance of IRL relationships, and start shouting at me not to spend so much time online, I should just mention that I do have people I speak to with my actual voice and not just with my keyboard, and that I have actual human contact with actual human people. Indeed, sometimes I am veritably overwhelmed by my dizzying social calendar, by all the people with whom I am actually friends, IRL.

But the thing is, the people I’ve gotten to meet online in the last three years also exist IRL and had it not been for the Interwebs, I would not get to know them, not in any way, not even in the carefully curated way that Facebook encourages.

And, worse also, in some ways, I’ve noticed that its Sometimes a teensy bit easier to be a teensy bit more communicative with people in the Facebook Messenger Chat Box than with people you’re sitting around with in the parish hall at church. I am inclined, in general, to let everything hang out everywhere, but some things just don’t come up in a face to face way, whereas online sometimes a topic arises that you discuss at length with people you don’t know as fully and you end up divulging more of yourself than you otherwise would. It’s not that you’re not being honest in one space and are in another, its just that the varying kinds of interactions means you might say a more expansive on one hand, or a more focused on the other, set of things.

By the end of the hour I’d come to feel the meaure of the gift that the Internet is, even Facebook sometimes, maybe even Twitter. If I didn’t have access to these platforms I would not have so many wide ranging and interesting conversations, I wouldn’t know very much about the way other people think, and I wouldn’t have met some people who I now consider Essential to my very own day to day happiness. Some of these people I will probably never get to meet face to face before heaven, but even now I don’t really like to go very many days without finding out what they think about, or how they are, or what they are doing. And, in the last month alone, that number has grown.

Really, my habit of blaming externals for my internal problems is most obvious when it comes to technology. But technology is a tool, an instrument–like a stove or a pen or a car or a needle and thread. Depending on who is wielding it, it might have great power or it might be a rather dangerous implement. When my children go about “getting their suppers”–turning on the stove to heat milk which they pour all over raw oats and brown sugar (blech)–they are not very adept and their use of the technology is pretty terrifying. I like to stand behind them and shout BE CAREFUL which definitely makes them better at whatever they’re doing. In other words, its not the stove’s fault when the supper turns out badly, its the cook’s.

Of course the internet is full of unlovely things. Of course Facebook devolves into a political outrage machine. Of course Twitter is a never ending stream of total weirdness. How could it not be? I occasionally post there. Every day I bring my black heart with me–wherever I go, whatever I happen to reading or writing, there I am. Of Course virtue signaling is the thing of the age. It has been of every age. It’s what we do, its who we are.

Still, its easier to blame Mark Zuckerberg for all the things that make me unhappy. But I suppose that if I’m going to do that, I should also thank him for all the kindred spirits I’ve met, all the interesting articles I’ve read and gorgeous houses I’ve examined, all the terrifying video clips of people getting hurt, all the bunnies sleeping in wine glasses, for that baby hippo learning to walk up a ramp, for the disembodied hands rolling biscuit dough into a ring and covering it with cheese, for discovering that even though other people can be Horribly Wrong they can nevertheless still be funny and interesting.

And really, as I’ve lain splayed out on my muscle-less back for the last two months, I should be really grateful that I haven’t had to Only talk to my children. I’ve been able to have conversations with people about grown up ideas and concepts. I haven’t had to even pray All That Much–just kidding, I have totally prayed. And, on a day like today, which is completely and totally and completely gray, with no inkling of the sun anywhere, I won’t have to have my vision limited to that unhappy reality. I will be able to read books, talk to my children and husband, read some stuff on the internet, and even, may God be praised, watch some cat videos–probably lots and lots and lots of cat videos, which will help me not finally and completely Give Up.

So thanks Facebook, and Twitter, and The Interweb–thanks for all the friends and all the interesting stuff. I raise my morning cup of Oolong to you.