No Illusions (anymore, anyway)

My relationship, as a writer and as a human being, with the internet is a problematic one. As it should be. We should all be concerned with issues of privacy, agency, creativity, and integrity. Generally speaking, the internet, as it has devolved to be, is a shit show. And that’s even before the introduction of the for sure treacherous territory of AI.

I’ve been desperately trying to bring back into my own life the halcyon days of pre-internet when the world in which my body resides was the only reality. I’ve had one foot here (and by here I mean where I am sitting as I write this, where the touch of the computer keys is visceral) and the other ever so reluctantly online. Two worlds, two realities, two sets of rules and values, two very different cultures. 

I have no illusions anymore about the impossibility of living 1. as Dana, and 2. as Dana’s avatar. I have always known that when push came to shove, I would haul that one virtual-living foot back into this, the only, reality and slam the door shut to the other. Increasingly, I am choosing this to save my sanity and my humanity.

We are witnessing the total breakdown of civility across the globe. Anyone who says it’s not so bad as all that is a delusionist with a denial complex. It is, in fact, as bad as all that and only getting worse. The barn door is off its hinges and beyond shutting.

I’m tired of all the gaslighting advice about how we should just learn to breathe in squares, or do a smart phone detox, or switch from Instagram to Bluesky, or focus only on good news and eschew the negative - as if any of that will really hold back the tide. 

I read an article recently by a young woman who experimented with one week away from all online engagement. She decided to go outside and reacquaint herself with people, and places, and events. Only what she found was no one wanted to join her there. The people she most frequently hung out with were only online. Nobody wanted to meet for a coffee, or go for a walk. The acronym, In Real Life no longer applied. Her sense of overwhelming loneliness amplified and intensified.

I am so grateful to have had 40 some odd years without an online world to suck me hollow of all that I value as a human being. But I also despair for those generations who will never know the bliss of a quiet mind.

The time to panic might be now. Could be. Wouldn’t go amiss.

For those of you who have been kind enough to subscribe to receiving my writing, I have this to say:

This is what I will be writing about for the most part from now on. I am not, by nature, a Debbie Downer, but I am a realist. I abhor gaslighting as a method of control and I can’t just pretend the sky is not falling. I’m sure I’ll write about my garden and the cats and other less fraught things once in a while but, for the faint of heart, this blog may no longer suit. My struggle to live in a world that has lost its way is one I want to explore through writing. 

For the time being, I will throw some things up on my website but I’m pretty sure I’m headed for a radical offline life.