Dating : The Internet Age

She yawns. She knows that she should have gone to sleep earlier, but the series of articles that she is currently on is so fascinating. Like usual, she was up reading for half the night, and so she is lethargic during her daily life. She is very busy on the internet, and sometimes, her night life on the net is more real than her actual life.

Growing up as a child on the internet means that she is fully addicted to it, and can’t live without it. Never will something else ever consume her life like the internet. She has no life without the internet. The internet is her god, her lord and savior, her master and partner and tool. She is part of the internet — a cog in the machine, a part of the whole, a creator of content. She is active in several blogs, she is everywhere.

She knows the internet well. She acknowledges all of its glories and benevolence, its usefulness and necessary parts, its well trawled bits and seedy underbelly. She is a visitor and a resident of these parts. Some parts are lighter, more people friendly; awe-inspiring, beautiful, and caring. Other parts are thick and hard to wade through; dense and complex but rewarding.

A relatively small subsection of the internet is filled with maliciousness. There, not knowing the rules doesn’t save you from the consequences. Browsing without a tor and VPN is stupidly naïve and dangerous. She doesn’t go there too often, but there are places where anything can be bought or sold for the right price — sick, depraved porn that sometimes ends in murder, all manner of drugs, hit-men for hire, and even slaves.

She acknowledges all of the internet’s faults and, like a true addict, uses it anyways. She doesn’t quite absolve it, but she knows that she could never stop using it anyway. She has no way to live without the internet and her technology. She can’t remember the last time she went more than a few hours without her phone or some other device capable of accessing the internet.

The saddest part about this? She’s far from alone. Most of her generation — from those born a bit before to everyone born after her — are just as bad, if not worse, in their addiction. Sleep is a lie or for the weak to people her age. The world is a depressing place, despite knowing that things are slowly getting better. Through the internet, each day is a carousel of horrors and atrocities with no hope.

She hates the media for doing that — for sacrificing hope to make a quick buck. She hates the corporations who do that too. It’s now so much simpler to just disconnect and drift away. Apathy is alive and well in her tribe. Certain atrocities will not be tolerated; everything else is too exhausting to deal with.

She and her generation are inheriting a world slowly hollowed and dying, and the problems seem insurmountable. They can’t fix them — the ones still in power don’t want to fix them and they lack the money — so they just escape from their problems however they can. They meet up with each other on the internet, because who has the money to go out nowadays?

They hope and wish and pray, but when have those ever worked? Many lack hope and are adrift, rudderless in the sea of life. They go on the internet and get radicalized, wishing that the world would be better, or that they could see some way for things to change. But it isn’t, and they don’t.

The internet is a land with so much knowledge, but ignorance is bliss. There are so many things that it would be better to simply forget, but they never do. The internet is her savior and everything that is wrong with her life and her reason for existence, most days.