Get me anywhere near the internet and I instantly become a fool—spending hours researching stupid stuff, wasteful information that makes no sense, but I do it…to build up the congressional library of self, later used in quality Thanksgiving conversations that create a simple, “Oh wow.”
For instance, did you know before scissors were used to cut human hair caveman stylists used rocks and fire? Holy bad perm Batman! In some religious circles it was forbidden for women to cut their hair and a child’s first hair cut is supposed to be a right of passage.
I can still see Actor Comedian Dennis Leary angrily telling the MTV generation to do something other than surf the internet, “If you want to surf, get a board! Use it for what it is…an outlet of endless information.”
Before the introduction of the internet, radio jock junkies pulled their knowledge from grocery store magazines, local and national newspapers and published reference books that cost sixty to a hundred bucks a piece—but it didn’t matter, it was all about being unique. I remember spending nearly all of 1985 and 86 in a public library researching anything and everything that took place in the United States and around the world from Wall Street to Vietnam, Nixon to Regan between 1962 to 1982—because my program director believed the show he wanted me to write and produced demanded the air talent to be on top of his game by talking about life as if I had lived it. Being at the big office with big books still wasn’t enough, I was ordered to check them out turning my early mornings into blazing hot research projects that left my skin a dark shade of leather.
Today its click, click, read the first paragraph once or twice and poof I’m an expert on the Green House Effect, heart disease and whatever else seems to catch my attention.
I’d be lying to you if I didn’t Google my name—it’s fun to see how many foreign countries are selling my debut book. I laugh, giggle and then shove it quickly aside because most first time authors give their gift away—whatever it takes to get words in print and there they sit, those cute little covers making money in India, Japan, Spain and Canada and not a single cent has made it my way.
How then can writers play a better game? I know! The internet! Wait!
The Attorney General is correct when he warns of this global tool as being the mightiest of all robbers on earth. The first thing you’ll do is lose valuable time searching for someone you can trust and when you do find that person or company you’ve been beat up so badly that having a relationship with them will be based on how many eyes you’ve attached to the back of your head.
So if the internet is untrusting, why then do we paste our trash on its pages? I couldn’t believe how quickly my sisters went at each other on Facebook. I remember when having a family squabble was something you heard being screamed through pulled downed shades and closed windows. There’s so much physical dirty laundry in the hamper that taking it to the internet has become the new vent.
I completely freeze when writers post: I’m leaving town for ten days…gonna miss my pets. Gulp! Or…I’m at the grocery store for another hour…can’t wait to get home to check out Oprah. Gulp! You’ve now given someone sixty minutes or nearly two weeks to ransack your house.
A good friend Nathan says, “Facebook should be used only for your true friends. I never accept anyone into my circle unless I know them personally.”
I get it…but we are of the human race and our biggest weakness these 2,000 years has been acceptance. It feels incredible to have five hundred people or more linked up to your outlet. You don’t have to look at them, shop with them or feel guilty about not inviting them over for dinner this Thursday. Facebook is no different than me moving nearly twenty five hundred miles away from my family in Montana…it’s just far enough away for my sisters to fight without it destroying my day.
The internet is coming to a car near you…it’ll be far easier to use than trying to text message someone on your Blackberry, Iphone or whatever gadget’s been invented for Christmas 2009. To which I ask, what took it so long? Life during the mid-70’s in the backseat would’ve been so much easier to digest as a growing teen if we had the internet. Rather than nearly killing my father with The Bee Gee’s on 8-track over and over again—I could’ve been looking stuff up, “What is the normal length of the average nose hair?” What? You never know when valuable information like this will prove to be useful!
I go to the internet to feel smart. There aren’t any tests so it makes everyone brilliant! You can find everything there! Especially K-9 rescues…that’s where my two Chinese Crested and two Maltese came from. The internet is like being part of a paperless generation; it’s totally green until you hit print. Although my mother has nothing to do with it, the internet is who we are today.
I can’t wait for the day when early morning vehicles are programmed by GPS systems to drive you to work—just crawl into the backseat which makes out into a queen sized bed and latch onto sixty or seventy more Z’s. Then again, with as powerful as the internet is getting, why should we go to work? Thanks to Skype, it gives you face to face time with your boss without having to identify their perfume or cologne.
And who knows…science will probably invent a computer chip that documents everything we think—at the moment we pass; the chip is placed on the internet for the rest of the world to digest. Our pieces parts could be the infamous missing link. Oh wait...aren't insurance companies already doing this? What do you mean I went to the doctor four weeks after I was born for broken toe?
Is this what a gnat or fly feels like when first crashing into a spiders web? Wow this is so cool...until the eight legged bug calmly walks up and whispers, "It was nice of you to stop in for a bite."
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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