May 30, 2006
Overload
Upon opening a favorite news page of mine, an ad pops up and begins playing without my consent. I practically jump out of my skin at the sudden burst of sound, and immediately scroll back to find the source. The ad itself features a nasal-sounding woman peddling some sort of bullshit for her company.
I didn’t want this.
My eyes scan the page for interesting news snippets. A drunk driver causes an accident that kills a 9 year-old girl. An elderly woman is beaten to death and robbed in her own home. The spoils? A few measly appliances and some petty cash. Several women have been sexually assaulted while jogging in a secluded area of a park, and the perpetrator is still at large. The investigation into the murder of innocent Iraqi civilians in Haditha moves forward.
Nobody wanted this.
I sigh, lean back in my chair, and close my eyes for a bit.
If our culture suffers from anything, it’s a “too much information” complex. And I don’t mean “too much information” like when your best friend decides to tell you a story about the time he got his red wings (if you’re unfamiliar with this and feel like throwing up in your mouth, look it up on urbandictionary.com),
I mean too much to process, something involving a constant bombardment of news snippets. Bits of text that appear to be important at first glance, but upon further inspection, yield another advertisement for erectile dysfunction treatment. It gets to the point where you’re so saturated with anecdotes and headlines and ads and advice and directions and instructions, you feel like your head is going to explode. You just stop processing information and let it fly by, occasionally throwing a sideward glance to something that might catch your eye. Hell, even blog entries such as this one. And the blogging scene is a perfect microcosm of the concept of excess information. You can’t throw a fucking stick without hitting someone with a weblog, and seven times out of ten, their content is shit. The amount of people with uniformly shitty blogs has become so large that many people dismiss blogs outright, because they assume that all blogs are the same: just one in many digital soapboxes for any dunderhead with a computer to stand upon and proclaim a shocking revelation such as: “I had tikka masala for lunch today!” or an unbelievably insightful and poignant entry consisting of “Been shitting something that looks like week-old chicken soup for three days straight. Am I going to die?”
I mean, fuck. Look at my site. What a douche, eh?
It’s no wonder people are coming down with attention deficit disorder. Daily life is so loaded with diversions both wanted and unwanted that we can’t help but be yanked from idea to idea like a ragdoll. On top of that, we’re faced with the clichéd “culture of fear” business that causes many people to immediately freak out and display a near-total willingness to surrender all of their basic rights. You think that people aren’t willing to exploit that? Think again.
I open my eyes and lean forward. My hand moves the trackball to the Start menu. I click once, drift to “Shut Down” and click. Another click to the “Shut Down” option sends my computer to bed.
I stand up, stretch, and walk to the window.
It’s a beautiful night out.
Posted by Jake at May 30, 2006 06:17 AM
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