Over in Life As A Human I tackle, with my usual grace and aplomb, the burning questions: 1) how to tactfully segue from someone’s grandma’s death to where to eat for lunch; 2) what exactly is in a Miscarriage Omelette?
NTKOG #212: The kind of smug luddite who views the internet as a evil necessity of modern life, and not as a trusted friend, confidante, life advisor, and pretty decent writer of erotica.
I am: unhealthily reliant on the internet. Since the age of 12, I’ve spent at least four hours a day – every day – online and, in the last half-decade or so, seen that number skyrocket to something closer to 12-14.
I am not: sure what people did before the internet, honestly.
The Scene: THE REAL WORLD! Did you guys know it came in high-def? And 3D! You don’t even need to wear those dorky glasses!
My friends (yes, I have real-life ones) have always razzed me for my all-consuming internet addiction. To deflect from their concerns, The Ex (a computer programmer and fellow addict) came up with a neat little solution: we started calling the internet Melvin, and would casually drop his name into conversations.
“Oh, Melvin told me about the cutest little French bistro down the street!” “Melvin has this hilarious new rap about famous presidential nephews!” “Dude, why is Melvin so obsessed with bestiality lately?”
We were in an unhealthy relationship, Melvin and I. He was bad for me, of course, but I needed him. Nonetheless, last week Melvin and I agreed to see other people.
Starting last Monday night – just as an experiment – I unplugged my router and other wireless majigs from the surge protector in my apartment. I cut myself a little deal: “If you really, really want to get online, you can,” but hopefully the extra inconvenience would act as a buffer against my baser impulses.
All of a sudden, as they say in horror movies, weird things started happening.
I started going to sleep at 10pm and waking up at 6 in the morning. I mysteriously gained an hour or so of reading time every evening. My apartment got very, very clean. Jesus H, guys, I took up jogging.
The weirdest change, though, is that I feel less of a driving need to know things, stupid things, right friggin’ away. When I’m plugged into my computer for virtually all of my waking hours, I feel entitled to satisfying the tiniest pings of curiosity.
How does cornstarch work? What was Shakespeare’s most anti-semitic play? Who currently owns the Hope Diamond? Stupid questions would expand into endless Google Chrome tabs and fill hours of my day, with no demonstrable benefit.
I’d always thought of my endless questions as a good quality. TKOG: Leading Pioneer of Brain-Thirst, boldly taking full advantage of the digital age! But after being freed of the urge for a few days, I’m beginning to suspect that my brain was more like a petulant child, nagging me non-stop until I distracted it with enchanting but worthless baubles.
Baubles. I should look up the etymology of baubles. …tomorrow. At work. If I still care.
The Verdict: I thought for sure this exercise would be a frost, but am delighted at how well it’s going. In fact, on Saturday (when I only had two days left before I could plug in the router again full-time!), I fully unplugged every last cord, wrapped them up neatly, and stuck them in a box in my closet. Not to stave off temptation – just because I wanted to.
I’m even going so far as considering not renewing my contract with Comcast in September. I – I just don’t even know who I am anymore. Melvin, hold me.
{ 12 comments… read them below or add one }
This is a brilliant idea. Last year when coming home from work I would occasionally (as in, two times total) have “power outage night”. It’s exactly what it sounds like – I’d pretend the power went out. I turned off my computer, TV, lights, everything except my radio tuned to WGBH so I could listen to some jazz and relax by candlelight. I feel relaxed just thinking about it.
I may have to think about evaluating my relationship with Melvin too, it seems like he gets around. He’s also always all “just come out for a minute, you really are curious about the plot of The Happening even if you don’t really care to see it. It won’t take long, you’ll even save time by not bothering to watch the movie!”. Six hours of reading TV Tropes later, I could have just watched the stupid thing and then run a marathon (provided I could actually run a marathon). Darn hyperlinks and tabbed browsing.
Niiiice. I unplug on the weekends now (mostly), and you’re right…I don’t miss it. And I don’t feel “disconnected.” In fact, oddly enough, I spend more time with real, living people, which is both annoying and/or fun, depending on whom I hang out with.
I can only imagine trying to do that in my current house. My roommate has this place so wired up that by the time I figured how to de-net the whole place the week would be over. But I have noticed that when the primary task of the internet becomes searching for a job…STILL…I am less inclined to use it non-stop. Now if I could only lose that dang Netflix streaming disc for the TV maybe I would get around to cleaning my bathroom.
Oh Netflix. That’s the only thing wrong with my no-internet-at-home ploy so far: I don’t own a TV (even though I pay for cable, weirdly enough — yay for bundle deals?) and the disk drive on my computer is broken, so if I want to watch something, my only options are Hulu or inviting myself over to Sister’s house. I’ll admit I broke the no-internet rule for two hours on Saturday specifically to watch My So-Called Life on Hulu. WORTH IT.
Sounds something similar to how I weaned myself from Facebook, albeit on a larger scale. This time last year, you could’ve gotten 5 statuses out of me a day. Eventually I decided I was spending way too much time there telling the world about things they didn’t really care about. “Hey guys, I made a sandwich! Now I’m gonna eat it!” (Or, y’know, something like that. :P) Went cold turkey for a week, and now I post something maaaybe once a week, and I generally feel a lot better about it. Though I still need to work on the not going on Facebook to check the stalker feed every time I can’t think of anything else to do.
Dude, when you said “cold turkey,” I was still on the sandwich mindtrack and my first thought was: “But what was ON the turkey sandwich? Was there stuffing? Cranberries? I NEED TO KNOW NOW!”
…guess there’s someone who would have found said status updates captivating! ;-)
It IS “The Merchant of Venice,” right? And the Smithsonian? (About the cornstarch, no idea)
The bf and I, in an attempt to spend more time together, agreed that we would have “no computer time” after work.
We have not succeeded once. But we do hang out more often once we’re at home! I actually don’t miss the computer at home. Even when I’m with Melvin at home, it seems pretty pointless, since I’m online all day at work.
Oh my. Reading this just caused me to have a flashback of myself all over again from the age of like eleven to my current age (21). Melvin and I have had a deep relationship since I was in about sixth or seventh grade. And I ALWAYS got made fun of for spending massive amounts of time with him. Ugh.
Thanks for writing this — it may have inspired me to disconnect myself from Melvin as well. Although, every time I think about disconnecting myself from the internet, from my phone, etc., I always get this weird panicked feeling. Like, “OMG, what if someone tries to reach me in case of an emergency?” … or, “What if I’m outside, with no cell phone, and something bad happens?” What *did* people do before cell phones and the internet? I really don’t know, and that’s kind of sad. It’s especially bad because I have a Droid, so I’m constantly connected. I get notifications when I get messages in my Gmail inbox. Ugh… so ridiculously addicting.
Anyway, thanks again for the inspiration. I might actually slowly try to wean myself off of technology for awhile (it’s just going to be really painful since I’m a flippin’ CS & IT major!). Also, “Melvin” is a hilariously awesome name for the Internets. :)
Holy crap, I am also in an unhealthy relationship with Melvin. Melvin you WHORE!
I’m sorry Melvin, i didn’t mean it, no. come back… COME BACK!
My roommate and I did a similar thing when our house was broken into and our laptops stolen. We each had an iPod touch or iPhone, and we wanted to have some sort of connection to the outside while at home, so we kept our internet, but we both chose not to get new computers.
I still had access at school, but needed my time there to be about my homework, and she didn’t have any real need for a computer at home.
We now have a super old IBM ThinkPad her brother fixed up and gave her, and my actions are slipping, but not completely. It’s now still easier for me to walk away from the computer when I want to, and the house being clean is a good reason to do that!
When the break in happened, we had just been talking about getting cable, and we decided then not to replace our internet addiction with TV, so we haven’t gotten it, and we don’t miss it!
It’s so nice to know that I can live without the electronic stimuli if I want to!
Dude, I was just about to say that I so could not do this, but then I remembered that I’ve just returned from taking a month off from the Internet. I went home to another continent and had to leave my phone (with a data plan) off. During that time I spent time with my family, finished planning a wedding, GOT MARRIED, and went on a honeymoon. All worthwhile reasons to not be online!
Though I must admit that it took a good 2 weeks before I stopped automatically reaching for my phone to look it up whenever someone asked me a question I couldn’t answer immediately and accurately. And that I missed it; I love being able to learn stuff whenever I feel like it!
But now that I’m back to being far away from my family, I do use the Internet primarily to keep in contact with them, so I feel less bad about my addiction!
And as my cousin once said, “Try as I might, I just cannot finish reading everything on the Internet!”