The Internet is a Drug.

I've come to the conclusion that the internet works much like a hallucinogenic drug. What it does is: it simulates real life to trick you into thinking you are living, when in reality you're not. All you're doing is wasting your time, staring at a screen and not doing much at all. You're achieving nothing but the second-hand experiences of other people - and, although that is an experience in itself, it does not compare to you having gone out and lived yourself.

Take Facebook, for example, or some form of instant messenger. You are deluded by the Internet Drug into thinking that you are living and are doing something productive because, well, essentially you are speaking to people, you are communicating - you can see their photos and you can gather a sense of them from the tone of their writing. But take a step back and consider the reality of it.

The truth of it is that nobody can convey the true essence of exactly who they are on the computer/ in writing; there always lacks a certain aspect of their character or, in some cases, the quality of not being in-person completely changes their character. I suppose it's because body language is an intimate part of communication that is lost in virtual discourse - body language, whether we can consciously identify it or not, adds to the experience of speaking to somebody. It makes it more real - it adds so many more emotions lost in virtual discourse; in Real Life, we become more vividly flustered, more embarrassed at mistakes, more satisfied when a point is fluently composed, things are more interesting when we can see we've affected our interlocutor in some way. These are all things I welcome in a life wherein our time is limited and we must experience as much as possible. However, the veil of virtuality always takes away this raw essence from us! but by diluting the emotions, by dimming the rawness, it gives us confidence to speak out; it allows us to convey who we would like to be more precisely. That's the effect of the Internet Drug. By removing raw emotion, raw experience, it gives us strength and confidence. It allows us to be who we would like to be, but takes away from us who we are. And as you can tell, from previous posts, I'm an advocate of the truth and of experience, so - although, at first, the internet draws me in, on consideration - the idea repulses me.

We look at the pictures of others on the internet, we hear the anecdotes of others on the internet - it all accumulates and convinces us that we are living. It is not living. I can't stress that enough. The internet is a facsimile of real life wherein power and confidence is granted, but wherein the rawness of Real Life is detracted.  I would rather throw myself out into Real Life, powerless and without confidence, but slowly build it up with the raw materials I'm handed than to sit behind the artificial light of a screen, perusing the virtual world with my makeshift personality, "happy" as my body rots away.

Then the question is: how do we wean ourselves off this drug? How do we become clean? The only answer is to live. To go out and experience. It's a hard task because when we step away from the world the Internet Drug has provided us with, the rawness of Real Life bombards us, like a powerful ray of sunshine illuminating one who has emerged from his cave, and we almost want to cower and run back. But if we take a moment, and venture from our caves, we notice a world more beautiful. We can begin to add meaning to our lives.

And that's all we can do. There is no intrinsic meaning to life - life is a blank canvas; we enter like clueless artists, we use everything around us as our teacher, and only then do we paint with bright and vivid colours our own meanings. We create our own masterpieces. As far as I can see, the Internet Drug can only ruin that.

Live.

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P.S. I'm not deluded enough to claim no benefits come from the internet at all - the point of this blog post is only to attack the internet becoming a lifestyle. The internet is another experience that we should partake in, but it most definitely should never become our primary activity.