In an Age of Disconnect, Where AIM Boxes Determine our State of Mind, and Real Contact is Few and Far Between, How do I Hold Myself?

I’ve been thinking lately about the nature of the internet. I am in no ways well versed in the technological aspects of wireless communication but I can attest to the emotional triggers and responses that our twenty first century technology oftentimes incites.

We live in an era that prides itself upon offering up greater connection. Cell phones, text messaging, instant messaging, email, facebook, and a myriad of other ways through which to reach one another all exist to facilitate our relationships. But I wonder, for all the avenues of communication available out there, are we really brought closer?

For my humble part in this big mish mash of humanity, I feel more than ever that nobody really knows me. I am, instead, but an AIM box, “ham shoegirl”, an icon, a status. In fact, it’s gotten to the point that so many of my conversations take place online or via email, that the person I vocally speak with the most is myself. To be the only one who knows oneself in the flesh is a lonely state of existence. What is more, the conversations I carry out via text messaging or Iming would not only be much quicker with voice to voice action, but also less prone to misinterpretation.

Same goes for the variety of social networks available online. Through them, we’ve learned to jump to conclusions, to judge the true characters of our “friends” via a series of virtual actions and updates designed to manipulate each other’s assumptions. How hard it is to watch oneself become transformed by the facebook, morphing from the individual you know yourself to be, into a profile, defined in part by its associations with other profiles, summed up by a single photograph and dependent upon groups, wall posts, and “presents”.

As much as I detest it all, online communication is simultaneously and sneakily addictive. It’s infinitely easier to bypass real connection and settle for its imitation instead. I almost always opt to shoot someone an email or an instant message, options which enable me to multitask whilst carrying out a conversation and to terminate my discussion whenever I feel ready rather than to go through the effort of politely winding down a telephonic discourse. So I admit that it is a degree of personal laziness that keeps me from forging the kind of connection I am so hungry for.

Case in point, this little essay of mine is written in a desperate attempt to disassociate myself from the expressionless aim box into which I’ve been shoved and to break the cycle of words gone cold without the timbre of a voice to shape them. And yet, to make my plea I turn to the source of my discontent, the internet, as a means of broadcasting my feelings. Perhaps my self-expression would be better accomplished by brandishing a bullhorn and shouting my emotions from the rooftop of Palladium…but it’s just too damn cold outside for that.