These might not be the days of miracles, but they could be.
“Viral overload” started as a complaint about the internet, that technological replacement for depth and an outlet for anger. The internet provides instant information about anything for anybody. Originally, there were vague rules about not leaving children alone with a computer or they could use your credit card to buy a Lamborghini, but other than that, the internet was way better than the state fair or college.
The intent of the internet was to share information and knowledge. Netscape Navigator and Microsoft Internet Explorer were a-m-a-z-i-n-g. You could Ask Jeeves a question without taking an encyclopedia off a library shelf and looking in several volumes to find information printed in 1958.
The sound of dialing up a connection is unspellable but sounded like it had a lot of rrrrrs. One could not use a landline phone, calling in or out, when someone else was internetting on the same line.
Originally, the internet had no protocols and no online tracking. It had its own language – Ethernet. Helvetica. You’ve Got Mail. Dancing Baby. World Wide Web. Downloads. (They took overnight.)
As it got more sophisticated, so did we. Music piracy. Cat videos. Amazon Books. Chat rooms. Desktop publishing. Gambling from the basement.
We were spoiled by advanced simplicity. Recipes didn’t come with back stories or ads or fees. Users didn’t click on news so much, as the internet was a relief from news and sitcoms. We got lickety-split answers to things we just had to know.
Then came Facebook and YouTube and Twitter and Insta and TikTok. Finally, we were not just connected, we were immersed.
So what’s the first thing we did? We started lying to each other – name, age, weight. We started transferring funds that didn’t belong to us. Started spreading rumors. We became clandestine. We could watch porn at home instead of on East Colfax. We did things we didn’t normally do because we could.
One night my friend Larry came out for dinner and I had just had Dish installed. This was right after the huge elaborate satellite receivers that took up the whole front yard were replaced by a micro-version that attached to the roof.
Larry and I decided to watch porn but had no idea how to go about it. We couldn’t master the tech prompts so we called customer support. The woman said, “What is it you don’t get?” I said, “I think it’s called Deep Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders.” Larry started laughing, I started laughing, and the woman said, “You know I tried to talk my husband into watching this stuff and he wouldn’t have it. I wish I could talk to him the way you talk to yours.”
And we all three laughed harder. The Dish employee hung up, Larry went home and I watched Maverick. It was all new to us and customer support didn’t have it figured out, also.
In 2021, so far, 4.6 billion people in the world use the internet, mostly from their phone. More than 2 billion are online at any given time.
What question do we want an answer to? Apparently, it’s not how to achieve world peace.
Most people use the internet for entertainment, although they swear up and down it’s to “keep in touch.”
I think it’s really because the internet is super-human. It doesn’t give us attitude, we can write and know our thoughts are instantly reaching someone either designated or mysterious, it provides homework answers, we can pay bills, get a weather forecast without prying open a persimmon seed, and waste time so fast that we ask where it went.
Mostly, it seems, the internet keeps us from doing hard work, brain work. When we don’t have goals, plans or reasons, we look for enjoyment. How that helps humanity explore the secrets of where we came from and where we’re going is a puzzle, but so is even wanting to do that.
Religious people might believe that faith is what carries them through life. Esoterics might say it’s planetary alignment or meditation, and capitalists might say all they want is all there is.
That might be the beauty of the internet – it supplies what we want and lets us know there’s plenty more where that came from.
It was just nice to think of “viral overload” in a different way.