Living Out Loud
Recently I met my best friend from college who had just moved back to town. We were chatting over coffee when he mentioned that he had a blog and internet fame. I asked him why, and he said it was because his friends encouraged him to write about anything that came to his mind. He has always loved writing, but didn’t take it seriously until then. To this day, he still loves writing on the internet and is happy with the kind of life that resulted from creating a blog like this.
Reading this, I thought back to how long it has been since I wrote anything on the internet. It was probably 2004 or so, when I reviewed some albums for a now defunct site. After that, I got busy with life and writing just didn’t happen. And then Facebook came along and it seemed silly to write about music on the internet when you could just post it on your wall for everyone to see anyway.
But as I thought about it, it made sense. These days, the Internet has become our main source of information and communication. It is the primary platform for music discovery. Who can deny that nowadays Facebook is probably the number one source for discovering new music and talking about music in general? A quick check of my Facebook wall will show me the latest deleted tracks, old songs that have been re-shared, requests for song recommendations and people being bored enough to write stupid comments.
I can only imagine what a musician or label must be thinking. The internet has evolved into this huge, uncontrollable beast that is about to break through the surface and devour the entire music industry. No one knows where it will go, but everyone is trying to figure it out. It’s in your face 24/7 with no real stopping point other than when you actually fall asleep. As we all know, people care more about what they see on Facebook than any other aspect of their lives. It’s such a crazy dynamic, but I think most of us have come to accept it as the new norm. The way things are going, everyone is just going to become part of these giant networks and use the ever-growing circle of friends as an endless playlist.
I think that idea is so prevalent in the general public now that we are starting to feel uncomfortable with it. We have all accepted the fact that we are going to get sucked into these sites, but you still see people considering it. I just don’t think it is something that people can control, no matter how hard they try. This is a loud and clear message that has been repeated so many times that we need to face it.
I remember sitting down with my niece and nephew, who are seven and five years old, respectively. They wanted to play Wii on my television while we watched some basketball game. We got the system set up in no time, but then I noticed they didn’t know how to use the controllers. It was a surreal experience, because I could tell that these kids had no clue about what was going on around them. They took for granted all the cool new gizmos that have become an integral part of their lives. So I sat them down and explained things to them as best I could, but it still didn’t click.
As a parent, there is nothing more scary than seeing your child without a care in the world. It’s like they are lost at sea, with no idea how to paddle their way back to shore. The reason so many people feel alienated is because they don’t know how to get around all of this new stuff, and it makes them uncomfortable. When I was young, we had a basic understanding of how our world worked. We were just kids with a simple view of the world that didn’t include any phones and computers.
But the youth today are no longer like us. They have been raised in an internet environment where they face constant stimulation that they can’t avoid without suffering permanent brain damage. I don’t mean this in a critical way, either. The internet is just a product of the consumer culture that has emerged from late-stage capitalism. It represents a natural evolution of the consumerism that was originally used to fuel the industrial revolution and make us all slaves to our jobs.
Plus, it’s obvious that people like using this stuff to kill time. There is no human being on Earth who doesn’t love Facebook or Twitter because it puts them in touch with friends and family all over the world. It’s a great way to stay involved with the people you care about and hear about all of the interesting things that are going on in your life.
The problem comes when one is forced to deal with it constantly. If you use these sites as a means for staying in touch with friends and family, then it’s not a problem. But if you begin to disappear into these virtual worlds, then you will end up like my niece and nephew: confused by the world around them, unable to navigate its complexities by themselves.
Conclusion
It’s easy to say that internet addiction is a new phenomenon, but I don’t think that is the case. We all have a default setting when it comes to this stuff, and our brains are just wired to access it even when we are not using it. Even though I am not addicted to the internet, I must admit that I feel like I am when I try to leave it alone.
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Living Out Loud