Further Thoughts on Going Off the Grid

[commonpeople1]

millionreasons has pointed me in the direction of this post by Rebecca Solnit in the London Review of Books that perfectly encapsulates my feelings (and possibly yours as well) about going off the grid:

In or around June 1995 human character changed again. Or rather, it began to undergo a metamorphosis that is still not complete, but is profound – and troubling, not least because it is hardly noted. When I think about, say, 1995, or whenever the last moment was before most of us were on the internet and had mobile phones, it seems like a hundred years ago. Letters came once a day, predictably, in the hands of the postal carrier. News came in three flavours – radio, television, print – and at appointed hours. Some of us even had a newspaper delivered every morning.

It's well worth a read.

There's a link also doing the rounds on Facebook that has made me think of this question about excessive internet use: Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy. From there, I ended up stumbling on 7 Ways To Be Insufferable on Facebook and I realised how much Image Crafting I've been engaged with[1].  But... aren't we all?  Is it possible not to Image Craft while online?  It feels like a conundrum.

Those two Facebook-related articles aren't explicitly about using the internet too much, but I feel you can infer from them that a lot of malady comes from it.

[1] I was doing this thing for a while where I posted online every Monday morning a photo of whichever cafe I was sitting in, doing a bit of creative writing.  Then, I went dancing with some friends and they said (in the best possible way) that those photos made them feel like shit because they always saw them when they were sitting in their offices, staring at the horrible week unfold in front of them.

Comments

[moral-vacuum.livejournal.com]

I liked them too! I could live vicariously through them. It's not as though you were being remotely smug about it.

[naturalbornkaos.livejournal.com]

Yeah, same. I enjoyed them too. There was a part of me that wished it were me but then only in a sort of "aspirational" way rather than a negative, envious one.

The blog posts you linked to, Ollie, were really interesting. I'd not come across the term "image crafting" before although I've had lots of conversations about it (ie: Sarah and I have been to concerts with people that have felt a little average, then got home to find they've posted "BEST NIGHT EVER!!1!!!" style posts about it even though, at the time, they were kind of "Hmm, that was okayish" - which is definitely "Image Crafting"). I'm totally guilty of it myself sometimes I'm sure but it's hard not to get sucked in... I'm glad there's a term for it though - sounds silly but being able to define it helps put it into perspective a little more.

There's no doubt in my mind that social networking to the extent that I do it is completely, utterly unhealthy. But I also have so many examples of where social networking has led to making good friends and has been useful that I feel I can't leave it behind for fear of missing out (FOMO - the other curse of our age).