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What the hell happened yesterday?
Damned if I know.
I do know it snowed the night before and that around 10am, I went outside and shoveled a foot or so of snow off the steps and sidewalk in front of the house. There really wasn't a helluva lot to do after that – Reverend Cal had ordained a snow holiday, it sucked outside, and most of the sidewalks had not been dug out. Consequently, I spent most of the day in the house.
I guess I came down with cabin fever.
So I spent most of the day on Facebook, debating the ins and outs of the Woody Allen molestation accusations.
Do I give a shit about the Woody Allen molestation accusations?
I do not.
But somehow yesterday, I did. In fact, I cared passionately and when people disagreed with me, I wanted to crawl into my computer, tunnel down the labyrinth of network connections and emerge into their studies, bedrooms or dens so I could bitchslap them and ram their heads into concrete walls.
Over-reaction?
Ya think?
###
I first noticed the propensity of Internet bulletin board-type discussions to drive me mad in the late 1980s when I initially joined the Well.
Shortly after I joined, a computer guy named Blair Newman committed suicide by sucking down the contents of a nitrous oxide tank, surely a most Well-ian way to die. Newman was brilliant if erratic online, and by all reports, almost impossible to take in person, front and center in your grill, blowing cigarette fumes in your face and effervescing like an Alka Seltzer dissolving in a pint of DDT.
Shortly before his suicide, Newman been dumped on by a bunch of the usual Well suspects. These days, it would be called cyber-bullying. Back then, though, Well culture dictated that it was perfectly okay to say the most horribly unkind things about whomever was the designated goat that week and to invite all your buddies to pile on too.
After his death, of course, the Big Question was: Had the Well (gasp!) played a role in his suicide?
And I'm just a gal who l-o-v-e-s blood on the highway, so naturally I read through every one of that interminably long screed of postings, including the ones from Mister Suicide himself. And it was perfectly obvious to me -- with no dog in that fight – that yes, the Well had played a pivotal role in destabilizing an unstable guy even further and driving him over the brink. I said as much, and then I got piled on!
This pattern came to be a familiar one in 15 years or so I belonged to the Well. I mean, the Well was really quite wonderful in a lot of ways. All my life, I'd felt like a misfit. While other people talked about sports and mileage and the adventures of their favorite sit com characters, I longed to talk about books and ideas. I mean I could talk other-people-ese with the best of them (I'm good at dialects) but I longed for people whom I didn't have to translate, with whom I could speak my own language. The WELL abounded with these people. Although it never quite dawned on me in the earliest stages that they were people. More like penumbra.
As my real life connections to Well people grew – I fell in love with two of them, and Tom Mandel became my very best friend in the world – so did the virulence of those online pile-on's.
Easy enough to avoid, you're thinking. Just log off.
Except I found that I couldn't. My addiction to Well flame wars was as intense as anything I'd ever experienced in any of my intense flirtations with various high-ranking members of the pharmacological pantheon. And the addiction always centered around engaging in these epic spite fests, these blazing displays of language and meanness. I didn't really care about the more mannered discussions.
Eventually, I left the Well. Ultimately, I'm much more interested in people's stories than their opinions, so LiveJournal was a much better fit as an Internet home base.
Yesterday was the first time I'd felt anything remotely like that eddying, horrifying, irresistible urge to read more, write more, engage in snippy exchanges.
It was awful.
I couldn't make myself log off until really late at night. And then I couldn't sleep.
This is why people need to write more on LJ, goddamit.
Damned if I know.
I do know it snowed the night before and that around 10am, I went outside and shoveled a foot or so of snow off the steps and sidewalk in front of the house. There really wasn't a helluva lot to do after that – Reverend Cal had ordained a snow holiday, it sucked outside, and most of the sidewalks had not been dug out. Consequently, I spent most of the day in the house.
I guess I came down with cabin fever.
So I spent most of the day on Facebook, debating the ins and outs of the Woody Allen molestation accusations.
Do I give a shit about the Woody Allen molestation accusations?
I do not.
But somehow yesterday, I did. In fact, I cared passionately and when people disagreed with me, I wanted to crawl into my computer, tunnel down the labyrinth of network connections and emerge into their studies, bedrooms or dens so I could bitchslap them and ram their heads into concrete walls.
Over-reaction?
Ya think?
I first noticed the propensity of Internet bulletin board-type discussions to drive me mad in the late 1980s when I initially joined the Well.
Shortly after I joined, a computer guy named Blair Newman committed suicide by sucking down the contents of a nitrous oxide tank, surely a most Well-ian way to die. Newman was brilliant if erratic online, and by all reports, almost impossible to take in person, front and center in your grill, blowing cigarette fumes in your face and effervescing like an Alka Seltzer dissolving in a pint of DDT.
Shortly before his suicide, Newman been dumped on by a bunch of the usual Well suspects. These days, it would be called cyber-bullying. Back then, though, Well culture dictated that it was perfectly okay to say the most horribly unkind things about whomever was the designated goat that week and to invite all your buddies to pile on too.
After his death, of course, the Big Question was: Had the Well (gasp!) played a role in his suicide?
And I'm just a gal who l-o-v-e-s blood on the highway, so naturally I read through every one of that interminably long screed of postings, including the ones from Mister Suicide himself. And it was perfectly obvious to me -- with no dog in that fight – that yes, the Well had played a pivotal role in destabilizing an unstable guy even further and driving him over the brink. I said as much, and then I got piled on!
This pattern came to be a familiar one in 15 years or so I belonged to the Well. I mean, the Well was really quite wonderful in a lot of ways. All my life, I'd felt like a misfit. While other people talked about sports and mileage and the adventures of their favorite sit com characters, I longed to talk about books and ideas. I mean I could talk other-people-ese with the best of them (I'm good at dialects) but I longed for people whom I didn't have to translate, with whom I could speak my own language. The WELL abounded with these people. Although it never quite dawned on me in the earliest stages that they were people. More like penumbra.
As my real life connections to Well people grew – I fell in love with two of them, and Tom Mandel became my very best friend in the world – so did the virulence of those online pile-on's.
Easy enough to avoid, you're thinking. Just log off.
Except I found that I couldn't. My addiction to Well flame wars was as intense as anything I'd ever experienced in any of my intense flirtations with various high-ranking members of the pharmacological pantheon. And the addiction always centered around engaging in these epic spite fests, these blazing displays of language and meanness. I didn't really care about the more mannered discussions.
Eventually, I left the Well. Ultimately, I'm much more interested in people's stories than their opinions, so LiveJournal was a much better fit as an Internet home base.
Yesterday was the first time I'd felt anything remotely like that eddying, horrifying, irresistible urge to read more, write more, engage in snippy exchanges.
It was awful.
I couldn't make myself log off until really late at night. And then I couldn't sleep.
This is why people need to write more on LJ, goddamit.
