Alone on the Internet Ocean
Sometimes the internet can feel very lonely.
I spend the greater part of each day “connected” to the internetwriting e-mails, sending and receiving instant messages, and looking up how on earth I'm going to make the computer do something or other. Being surrounded by these imaginary cities of virtual people, newspapers, stories and conversations does nothing to stop an occasional attack of the lonelies though.
I travelled into and out of England's capital city each day for a couple of years. The metropolitan area of London hosts something in the region of fifteen million people, and yet during my journey each day I interacted with perhaps two of themthe ticket conductor on the train, and the girl selling coffee in Paddington Station. Everybody else had their own agenda. In London if you are even stood in somebody's path you arein their way you would never daretalkto anybody for fear of being considered a lunatic, pervert or terrorist.
The same thing is often true of the internet. You reach out to others through your blog, sometimes write posts baring the minutiae of your life, and often get nothing in return. You keep pushingkeep swimming against the uninterested tide, and you start to tire.
For a long time the internet felt like a conversation with myselfmy own sounding boardsomewhere to organise the turbulent thoughts of the day in plain sight, because nobody was really taking any notice. Kind of like the mad guy stood on the intersection with the placards.
Tumblr, and to a lesser extent WordPress, made me realise I'm not alone. There are thousands of us among the millions, and through one way or another we are finding each other. From time to time, westep from the faceless rushing crowd and nudge each other on the shoulder;“Hey, you're not so bad”And suddenly the world is a little bigger, a little brighter, and a little more friendly than it was moments before.