Why do we even try to understand each other?

[constance]

Today I was eating ravioli florentine in my office and poking around the internet (for the record, exploding dog) when the receptionist walked in with some papers for me, and her attention was caught. I mean, exploding dog is pretty eye-catching, after all. And she asked, and I explained, and she sort of shook her head a little, not in a gosh-you're-such-a-freak way -- such looks are not entirely unknown to me -- more a gosh-how-can-I-possibly-process-all-this-information way, and said, "you know stuff on the internet I've never even seen." And setting aside for the moment the idea that exploding dog is an extremely popular website and lots of people know all about it, I realized that she was right, and that the reverse was true also, that there are more things in her internet than are dreamt of in mine. And that our lives are like that too, we are isolated like blown bubbles, floating around in our individual spaces, occasionally hooking up at some point but only touching along the one flat plane, still separate even when we're connected, and I got all weirded out and had to quietly chug a diet Coke and eat some carrot sticks and try to GET A GRIP.

I'm still kind of working on that.

Comments

[amelia-eve.livejournal.com]

I've seen that artist's work before but I never knew who it was. So I am digging the link, thanks!

But yeah, the Internet has a whole lot of different neighborhoods, many never explored by me. Leitmotiv has been showing me a lot of practical stuff I never considered before (hello, online banking at last) but he's all new to most social networking. It's very sweet that he thought I made up the word "squee," but I couldn't take credit.

[faefyre.livejournal.com]

Mmmmh, Sweet Child O' Mine, always a favourite.

[xanthophyllippa.livejournal.com]

And if I'd stared too long I'd probably break down and cry.

Whoooooaaaaa, ohhh ohh oh sweet child o'mine! *thrashes*

[proteinscollide.livejournal.com]

This semester, one of our class assignments was to find relevant websites to our course material and blog about them for our tutorial class. I'm amazed at how many posts started with "I only use the internet for Google/YouTube/MySpace and so I don't know what to do with this week's topic..." and yet these are the supposed 'kids of the internet age' (first years - 18 or 19 - oh god to be that young again!). It was a bit of a sad realisation.

[lindyhoppr.livejournal.com]

I like it when you post links to stuff. I usually find new things when you do.

Have you been to Pandora.com?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

You totally should've taken credit for it, because who'd know otherwise? I mean, who made that one up in the first place? IT IS A MYSTERY.

Exploding dog is one of my favorite ways to poke around in. It is so often surprisingly wonderful.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

She's got a smile that, it seems to me, reminds me of childhood memories.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

Oh, Axl Rose. Remember when you were sort of hot?

[tofty.livejournal.com]

That is sad, you're right. I mean, I expect that age to be able to run circles around me on the internet!

I don't miss 18-19 in the least. I do, however, miss 30. I loved being thirty.

[tofty.livejournal.com]

I had never been! I love streaming radio, but I'm afraid my internet connection is almost never up for it (unless I'm cadging wireless internet in some public place, which carries its own set of problems). If my internet issues ever sort themselves out, I'll be first in line!

I like posting links -- and I also love clicking around when other people post them. There's almost always something fun and unexpected on the other end.