More than a year ago, I stopped using MySpace. And longer ago than that, I stopped using AIM. So when I heard about a little project called “Computer Shutdown Day,” I asked myself why not?
And so it began, late at night on Friday, March 23. I’d pledged both personally and officially on the “Computer Shutdown Day” website to spend 24 hours sans computer on March 24. This should be simple, I mused, as I shut down my computer (for the first time in weeks). I went to sleep shortly after, and woke up the following day, willing and ready to forsake my computer.
With plenty to do and plenty of time for doing it, I took a trip to the public library. I walked between bookshelves, and scanned the selection with other scholastically inclined students. We basked in books, and better yet, we basked in silence. I sat down for awhile to study, before browsing the shelves again for a book I’ve been meaning to read. When I realized I’d never find the book on my own, I thought I’d check the card catalog.
But the card catalog is on the computer. Dun, dun, DUN!
Later that day, I wasted some time taking some shots with my good, ol’ digital camera. Hey, these look great! I thought to myself. I should show these off. Alas, my pledge! Not only did my ”Computer Shutdown Day” pledge end any chance of retrieving photos from my camera, but it sent my hopes to share them with friends plummeting. Without a computer, impossible.
The book, the camera? Unfortunate. But when the sun set, I prepared for the home stretch. Hoping to kill time quickly – since only hours lay between me and my treasured email box – I thought I’d see a movie. That’s when, by reflex, I walked up to my quiet, cold computer. I realized it had be years since I’d used anything but the Internet to find movie times.
Years.
“Computer Shutdown Day” wasn’t necessarily hard. But it wasn’t necessarily easy to realize just how much I rely on computers. The more I ponder, the more I ask…do I really need to use the computer as much as I do? 11:30p.m. on Saturday, 24 hours had passed. I checked my email.
No new messages.
I think I can answer my question.
For a brief while, I’ve been unable to remember why I’d deleted my MySpace account, which is really somewhat senseless.
What am I doing? I think to myself, quite often, while I browse the MySpace profiles of the people with whom I used to be MySpace friends. Lately, when darkness falls on weeknights, I am wide awake and left with a dilemma: do something boring (i.e. balance my checkbook, do some laundry, etc), or waste time. Oh, how sweet it is, when I waste time; when I dance to 80s music, when I watch Nick @ Nite, when I blog. But there’s nothing sweeter than wasting time with some secret MySpace action.
When I dumped the online social network to embrace reality, I didn’t think I’d ever look back. Ever. But every night, around 9p.m., something would knock at my brain. MySpace, that something would whisper. You need MySpace. And in front of my computer, I’d sit, and I’d think about MySpace. I’d think about all the 9p.m.’s I’d spent sitting before the site. And for months, I could step away from the computer.
But, eventually, I did the unthinkable. Like a recovering alcoholic parking “the wagon” in front of a bar and staring at its front door, I typed the once-forbidden letters and watched MySpace.com load. Familiarity, I sighed and probably smiled. And then, like a recovering alcoholic walking into the bar and looking around, I began to search for my friends.
Oh, the lure: the comments, the bulletins, the friend requests…and the top eight. Oh, the envied top eight! But after my ranting, my raving and my pretty public denunciation of MySpace on lifeteen.com, I knew creating a new account would be an act of preposterous hypocrisy. And that’s why when a friend offered to create, operate and maintain a MySpace in memory of my MySpace, I jumped on it. A few senseless weeks have passed. And during most of this time, I’ve failed to recollect why I ever left the network.
“Any new friend requests?” I asked Kerri. “And while you’re at it, check my profile views!”
“One request, and 64 views.”
“Sixty-four? That’s it? What a rip off!”
Why on earth haven’t more people looked at my profile? At me?
And there you have it. There, I had it, actually. And, if I might, I’d like to quote myself with the words I used in my story on lifeteen.com: “But the longer I used (MySpace), the more it fostered a sickening obsession with myself…”
No, after allowing someone to essentially operate a MySpace in my name, I’m not obsessed with myself – well, with my hair, maybe, which is irrelevant. But then what, you might ask, keeps me craving MySpace? It’s the lure. And I’m not just talking about the pointless fun found in bulletin surveys, or the curious excitement found in brand new friend requests. The lure comes from years – and I mean years – of having relied too heavily upon Internet communication. Like the lifeblood that keeps us living, computer mediated communication keeps the cravings some of us have for connection satiated. And if anyone has developed an ability to “connect” with others via ICQ, until I found AIM and via AIM, until I found MySpace, it’s probably me.
And my heart would pound, and the room would seem to grow cold: New Messages. Please be from him, please be from him. Yes! And I’d open the message, and there I’d see it: “Haha, that’s funny! Talk to you later.” He laughed, I made him laugh, and we share so many interests, is it love? NO.
It’s the false sense of intimacy that’s going to take so much away from our abilities to “commune” face to face, if it hasn’t already.
Today, I came to my senses.
Disclaimer: The above scenario during which “I” contemplated having fallen in love by way of MySpace was, in fact, a fabricated scenario. I was never that bad. lol.
