Internet Addiction Clinic: One Hour Survey

Things that I resisted looking up on the internet in a one hour period:

Is there a complete works of F Scott Fitzgerald boxed set?

The Go Fug Yourself fashion blog

Lyrics for Dispatch’s “The General” and Bon Iver’s “Skinny Love” 

(even though I have totally looked up the lyrics to those songs before)

Occupy Wall Street google search

Look at my own facebook wall, look at things I have already posted on facebook before

Scarlett Johanssen Style google search

Wikipedia for Lost in Translation

Baby names--boy names as girl names (like Billie)

Sending Meredith an email, with some pictures from our summer together

Look up embroidery patterns

The name Ursula for a baby name

Vintage Sunglasses

Eye of the Tiger lyrics

Songs that will really pump you up for life! and make you feel awesome!

Look up events on facebook

Look up easy guitar chords

Google Elna Baker

Is Fight Club on netflix streaming?

Periodically, I will delete all the browsers off my laptop and not have the internet at all. Then, when something inside yourself whispers, "you must look up a recipe for yellow coconut curry RIGHT NOW, it is very important," you can't do it. You just have to squirm awkwardly until the itch you can't scratch goes away. This is very hard. This is why it is an addiction. 

A couple weeks ago, I decided to write down all the things that i felt compelled to look up in a one hour period when I didn't have a browser and it was impossible. This list is what I got. It made it appallingly obvious that a) nothing i feel compelled to do online is urgent in the least and b) does this list say something about my subconscious/what i truly care about? fashion, and baby names, and blah? uggghhh i don't want to be that person uggghhhh. In either case, writing this list helped me to realize I want to change my internet habits.

Adbusters

I first saw adbusters in the airport when I was 19. I was stranded in Newark for what was to be a 7 hour delay. I was part of a study abroad group of 70 coming back from 2 months in Israel. It was a trip about 4 weeks too long. Not because of the country or the traveling or missing the US, but because of the students I was with. Nice people, all of them. I had no personal grudges. They were the picture of typical mormon kids, squeaky clean and well meaning and no secret agendas except for good clean fun. So it was kind of hard to put my finger on why I couldn’t stand being with them any longer. A little too much conformity, a little too much blatant consumerism, a little too many examples of assumed cultural supremacy, and i felt like they had all been gnawing at me the whole time. That extra 7 hours of time with them in the airport seemed like a 10 year sentence against me. I couldn’t stand it anymore and I wandered the airport stores and lounges alone.

Adbuster’s cover featured several marines carrying what looked like another soldier, probably dead, with the American flag draped over him. A quote sprawled over the front: “War is the force that gives us meaning.” It was obviously, blatantly subversive. Perfect. I had been trying for 2 months to be subtly subversive, and I needed to finally be out in the open. A magazine that was anti-war, that took itself seriously (too seriously), that openly spoke of the problems in our society. Blatantly anarchist and anti-corporate. This is something that I could wave in the face of my fellow students and say “Hey! I am different than you!” Which they already knew, which they already suspected. But I was just as desperate as they were to put me in a category. Just how was I different from them, exactly? And why?

I had personally connected with very few of the students. And I questioned the sincerity of the few I’d connected with. One I connected with because we were both the obvious outsiders. One because she was my roommate, and hey, I was a social creature after all--spending that much time with any person who isn’t totally hostile leads to some kind of connection. One I connected with because we both had an interest in journalism and were a little too intense for other people. I have not kept in touch with any of them. 

Like I said before, none of these people on study abroad were mean or bad or cruel, or even unfriendly. They tried hard to welcome me and i tried to fit in, but it just wasn’t working. But being truly nice, they even found ways to disguise that. “You’re so independent, Gini,” or “you are someone who does their own thing and doesn’t care what others think. I wish I could be like that, I admired you.” I was told these things so much over the 2 months I lived with these 70 students, I wondered if they had sent around a group email or had a secret meeting to coordinate how as a single body they should handle the strange, serious, freshman girl that was somehow outside the norm.

Anyway. I would have been attracted to any magazine that addressed war and peace, as that had been something of an intellectual hobby for several years already, and would only intensify as college went on. But it was a good time in my life and my psychological history for subversive magazines. I don’t want to make too big a deal out of it, because it’s not tragic and it’s something that I’m changing gradual, but I’ve always been in the ‘outsider’ position. Outside of popular groups, outside of the mainstream of thought. I still don’t know if other people put me there or if I put myself there. Probably both.

Adbusters lit the spark behind OWS, did you know that? You probably know that by now. 

Advice that I am trying to follow

"One, I would take some classes at the UCB. Two, the secret to the success of The State was we never waited for anyone to ask us to do anything, or for anyone’s approval to do anything. We just fucking did stuff. We were shooting all the time, writing all the time. We would put up a live show every couple of months. We were aggressive. If you wait around for an opportunity to come up, it’s not coming. It isn’t, ever. Opportunities are not coming. The only opportunities that are coming are the ones you create. Otherwise you are just waiting around. "

Thomas Lennon’s advice for people who want to break into sketch comedy.

Not that I want to do sketch comedy, but you know. Other stuff.