print(“Hello, World!”)
On loving, hating, breaching, and becoming the internet.
I am a living, breathing, walking stereotype of my generation. I watch most everything at twice the speed, I give into objects of instant gratification and then regret it, and I often skim things instead of giving them my full time and energy. I subscribe to dozens of other newsletters, but I let them rot in my inbox for months until I have “time” for them. But they really only take about six minutes to read, so when I say I don’t have “time”, what I really mean is “motivation”. My stack of books to read and movies to watch grows by about two a day, but I consume them at a rate of two a month. I prefer poems and articles over books and essays, because I can read more of them in the same amount of time and feel more accomplished. Basically, my attention span is fried. And I’m pretty sure yours is too.
I’m not calling our generation lazy (I actually just watched this video that changed my perspective on that word). But between growing up alongside technology and basically missing out on two years of school because of a pandemic, I do believe that we have been dealt a really poor hand when it comes to being focused. It doesn’t help that it is impossible to live our life without the internet: All of my coursework is online. What’s for dinner? Check online. Want to watch a movie? Stream it online. Want to read the news? Read it online. Want to listen to music? You guessed it! Find it online! I’m not implying that these tasks don’t have analog counterparts—they do. I own a number of CDs and DVDs, but both they and the objects to play them on are at my parents’ house, where I don’t live for 75% of the year. I have a physical copy of my course reading, but my assignments based on it are due digitally. I care too much about reading news from more than one source to read a newspaper (I also don’t know where to get one anymore). The loss of third places is nothing new, and I cannot explore the few that we have without spending at least fifteen dollars. And to have fifteen dollars to spend, I need to have a job. But guess what? My job is also online. Are you sick of this? Do you want therapy? Well you’re out of luck, because that’s probably also online.
It feels embarrassing not to know how people did things before technology. Driving with a physical map is the most stressful thing I could imagine, but is propping my phone up on the dash much different? I recently started penpalling with a friend in an effort to be more offline, but I still rely on her texts of “WE JUST GOT A LETTER” to confirm that it was received. And when my letter takes ten days to deliver instead of the usual seven, I begin to wonder what people did if they couldn’t text their friend to see if the letter was received or lost in transit. I call my parents everyday, and I think of what my grandfather said to me when I committed to college. He told me about moving to boarding school at fifteen, when all he could do to stay in touch was send infrequent letters. He told me how lucky I was. It still sticks with me. How lucky I am.
The internet and technology are so, so deeply intertwined with my own life, and it scares me to say that I don’t really know what or who I am without them. Even the word internet has been shifting from a capitalized, proper noun to a non-capitalized generic term. If everything shut down one day (which is not an impossibility), I don’t know what I would have to show for myself. Sometimes I wish I could be mysterious and off-the-grid, that I could go back in time to when I first downloaded Google Plus (or Google Hangouts or whatever I was on in fourth grade) and destroy my account. But then I remember that I met my best friend online, and I’d honestly rather know her and have my brain rotted by the internet than to not know her at all.
I’m not sure that I ever would’ve cared about writing without having the internet to read the work of others before mine, and I really don’t think I would’ve moved across the country for university without having the internet to stay in touch with everyone I grew up with. It’s been four years since the pandemic started and technology shoved its way into every crevice of my life. It’s been one year since I got into UCLA, and I have mainly the internet to thank for convincing me to apply in the first place. It’s today, and I wouldn’t be able to share any of these thoughts with you without such a platform to post it on.
What I mean is, I am a living, breathing, walking stereotype of my generation, and I don’t really want to be any other way. There are healthy and ethical ways to interact with technology (do not ask me about AI as I will explode on the spot), and it is our responsibility to learn how to do so. My journey to slow down, engage with long-form content, and shift certain aspects of my life offline can coexist with my journey to grow alongside the internet, familiarize myself with every cool new thing it can do, and not disparage a system that my peers and I are so squarely at the intersection of creating and experiencing. What a joy!
Related Reading:
"learned helplessness" & the tech literacy crisis | Internet Analysis
we used to say BRB. now we just live here. | learning-loving and meaning-making
It's not video. On AI "video" and post-cinema. | Thomas Flight - Field Notes
Random Websites (to spend time on more than the standard ten):
Mother of all niche websites
Swellgarfo (DIY Connections!)
Depths of Wikipedia (@depthsofwiki on Twitter/X)
Substack (!)
Hope everyone is doing well! As ever, thank you for reading.
Love,
Aarushi
i adore you and your thoughtfulness aarushi
Every time I read something written by you, I feel so incredibly lucky to know you! So excited to dig into the recommended websites when I have the “time” 🤪