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31 August 2018 14:46Internet nastiness as accessibility need.
There's a really troubling disjoint between the central nature of the internet in our lives, and how horrible it is to be here.
I've got a couple of books 80% finished, say - but publishers aren't interested unless you have a blog or a twitter following. What if I want to opt out of that? Worse - why are publishers still taking such a significant cut of author profits, while passing promotion and branding tasks back to the creators? Traditionally, it was extremely hard for anyone to get exposure without a publisher's help. It is certainly good that the internet has disrupted this, and allowed anyone a shot at exposing themselves.
But "exposed" is the central word here. Participating online makes me feel acutely exposed. Sorry, sorry if you've messaged me or replied to a thing and I've yet to respond; the sign of a full inbox makes my heart sink and my stomach clench.
There's a problem here I can't fix. I want to participate in active Pagan culture. Those conversations are online. I want to join some in-person groups. They all advertise online. I want to get my book out there, or even just my articles and ideas to share them. For that, you need to be visible online. I can't opt out; attempting to is profoundly disabling. I still need to bank - banks are closing, and their telephone lines direct you to their website. I am currently looking for a job - they're all online, as are their submission forms. I've tried telling my friends - I'm not online, please telephone me? But people have forgotten how to do this, or are happier with the social norm of messaging. The avenues for access which existed before the web are gone.
But internet use is disabling for me too. Typing brings on hand pain that prevents me from playing music, drawing, or sitting without pain. I use it addictively; I spend three or four an hours late at work stuck in a loop. It upsets me. The experience of being jumped by a hundred or a thousand strangers, on various occasions in the past decade, and the irregular but frequent drive by harassment has left deep, deep scars; knowing the damn thing is sitting there in the corner feels like I'm being watched.
The two years I spent without the internet were two of the happiest of my life. It was a peace I cannot describe. Since then, my mother insisted on installing it - and when I repeatedly went over the data limit, due to an addiction I cannot beat, chose to make it an unlimited supply; and now my partner insists he doesn't have a problem, and mostly uses it to communicate with long-distance friends - and spends eight or nine hours a day playing addictive web games and watching American news shows. We're not even bloody American.
(The expectation that I'm up to date and care about what's happening in the US is perhaps the encapsulation of how the internet has changed our experience in a way I cannot opt out of. On the day of the Pulse shooting, a couple of friends texted me and said they'd been upset by what had happened in Florida. I had no internet at the time. If they hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known. When I got their texts, I was extremely upset because for me, Florida means Florida Disney, and my first mental image was of a terrorist attack on families. Discovering it had targeted adults was almost a relief. I can't help but think I was better off not knowing, for all the good I could do to help once I knew; than my friends were for having it roll in in all their social spaces.
And then the expectation you are up to date on literally everything. What if my desire not to know about what's happening to X group in Y country wasn't erasure of X group, but a psychological necessity to focusing on what's here, what's now, what's around me; the amount of time I have in the day to keep up to date; the quantity of resilience I have to know about so much suffering and unhappiness and death and not having a jot of power to do a thing about it.)
If internet use is necessary and mandatory for modern living, it needs to be made fit for purpose somehow. As it stands, both access and lack of access are disabling - and one of those must give.
There's a really troubling disjoint between the central nature of the internet in our lives, and how horrible it is to be here.
I've got a couple of books 80% finished, say - but publishers aren't interested unless you have a blog or a twitter following. What if I want to opt out of that? Worse - why are publishers still taking such a significant cut of author profits, while passing promotion and branding tasks back to the creators? Traditionally, it was extremely hard for anyone to get exposure without a publisher's help. It is certainly good that the internet has disrupted this, and allowed anyone a shot at exposing themselves.
But "exposed" is the central word here. Participating online makes me feel acutely exposed. Sorry, sorry if you've messaged me or replied to a thing and I've yet to respond; the sign of a full inbox makes my heart sink and my stomach clench.
There's a problem here I can't fix. I want to participate in active Pagan culture. Those conversations are online. I want to join some in-person groups. They all advertise online. I want to get my book out there, or even just my articles and ideas to share them. For that, you need to be visible online. I can't opt out; attempting to is profoundly disabling. I still need to bank - banks are closing, and their telephone lines direct you to their website. I am currently looking for a job - they're all online, as are their submission forms. I've tried telling my friends - I'm not online, please telephone me? But people have forgotten how to do this, or are happier with the social norm of messaging. The avenues for access which existed before the web are gone.
But internet use is disabling for me too. Typing brings on hand pain that prevents me from playing music, drawing, or sitting without pain. I use it addictively; I spend three or four an hours late at work stuck in a loop. It upsets me. The experience of being jumped by a hundred or a thousand strangers, on various occasions in the past decade, and the irregular but frequent drive by harassment has left deep, deep scars; knowing the damn thing is sitting there in the corner feels like I'm being watched.
The two years I spent without the internet were two of the happiest of my life. It was a peace I cannot describe. Since then, my mother insisted on installing it - and when I repeatedly went over the data limit, due to an addiction I cannot beat, chose to make it an unlimited supply; and now my partner insists he doesn't have a problem, and mostly uses it to communicate with long-distance friends - and spends eight or nine hours a day playing addictive web games and watching American news shows. We're not even bloody American.
(The expectation that I'm up to date and care about what's happening in the US is perhaps the encapsulation of how the internet has changed our experience in a way I cannot opt out of. On the day of the Pulse shooting, a couple of friends texted me and said they'd been upset by what had happened in Florida. I had no internet at the time. If they hadn't told me, I wouldn't have known. When I got their texts, I was extremely upset because for me, Florida means Florida Disney, and my first mental image was of a terrorist attack on families. Discovering it had targeted adults was almost a relief. I can't help but think I was better off not knowing, for all the good I could do to help once I knew; than my friends were for having it roll in in all their social spaces.
And then the expectation you are up to date on literally everything. What if my desire not to know about what's happening to X group in Y country wasn't erasure of X group, but a psychological necessity to focusing on what's here, what's now, what's around me; the amount of time I have in the day to keep up to date; the quantity of resilience I have to know about so much suffering and unhappiness and death and not having a jot of power to do a thing about it.)
If internet use is necessary and mandatory for modern living, it needs to be made fit for purpose somehow. As it stands, both access and lack of access are disabling - and one of those must give.
