Dear Internet,
I think we need to discuss our relationship, as I believe it is no longer a healthy one for me. When we first met back in 1993, I was a fresh-faced college student – you, too, were just learning your way around campus. We’ve been through a lot since that fateful day in the (then) new computer commons at Colorado State University when I first sat down across from you and looked at you and you stared back, unblinking. Back then, neither of us had any real idea where this alliance would take us; I wasn’t really looking for anything serious, but you knew right away that you wanted a long-term relationship. Why, oh why then did you have to choose me? Was I that easy of a target? Could you see in my eyes the desire to be accepted by you? Did you start off with good intentions that slowly became perverted with time? Did you just want to share information with me and allow me to share information with others? Or are you just evil, pure evil all the way down to the very core of your being? Even when it seems like you are helping, I think maybe you are really hurting me.
Did you know that my fanatical obsession with the meaningless minutiae of sports statistics would lead to an average of 3 hours each day researching fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy hockey, fantasy basketball and fantasy golf? Of course you did. Did you also know that all that time spent basking in the glow of the athletic achievements of others would cause my own muscles to atrophy to a point where I can no longer throw a football, hit a baseball, stand on ice skates, dribble a basketball or swing a golf club? Of course you did.
You should take a cue from disgruntled wives everywhere and not let me access you when I’ve been drinking. If you had just done this for me, protected me from something I wanted when you knew it wasn’t good for me, then I would not need to live in a 4-bedroom house with just you. I would not currently have 4 dressers, 3 coffee tables, an armoire, 2 headboards and a credenza in my garage, all in various stages of undress, but none having gone through the process of stripping, refinishing and selling for which I purportedly bought them. I would not have 4 surround sound systems for my 3 TVs (also procured through you), nor would I have 13 lamps, all different, all bought ON CLEARANCE - LAST DAY, all ugly. I certainly would not have accumulated 37 credit cards, all of them promising the lowest rates for balance transfers, yet none of them managing to live up to those claims. I highly doubt that my kitchen would have become a veritable Coca-Cola collector’s cache without you – I never liked trinkets and do-dads, but you make it so easy to buy anything and everything under the sun that I just go ahead and keep clicking ‘add to cart’…but, hey, that’s why I have 37 credit cards!
Without you, I never would have learned about the online communities of MySpace, Classmates, or Facebook - which would never have allowed any of my psychotic ex-girlfriends to track me down and send me emails ranging from the charmingly deranged to the downright frightening. Thanks to your ability to shrink the globe and open up lines of communication the people I didn’t have time for in my past are now a part of my everyday life. By virtue of having so many ‘friends’ and acquaintances whom I know only through you, I have all but eliminated having to actually deal with people in person. Eh, who needs actual human interaction these days anyway, right? Too much actual face-to-face communication might allow people to share real emotions and opinions, and that couldn’t be a good thing for society, could it? If it weren’t for you, I might still be able to talk to people when I meet them in ‘the outside world’ without my mouse fingers twitching. Without you, my skin wouldn’t have taken on this attractive pallor, a dead giveaway as to how much time we spend together in our dark room, shutting out the light of day.
Email, what about email, you ask? I agree, it’s nice to not have to speak to people any more when I have something colorful to say, much easier to type it in black letters on a white background. It’s especially nice because with email, unlike actual conversation, one leaves interpretation of the tone of the message entirely up to the recipient. This is especially fun when I try to convey sarcasm in a message, and instead of eliciting the laughing reply I anticipated, I get either an expletive-laden tirade or no reply at all. Oh well, if they don’t get me, it’s their loss, right?
Even with all of these wonderful things you’ve given me (and I didn’t even mention the joys of carpal tunnel syndrome, the aching back, the fading eyesight or the permanently kinked neck), I just don’t think that this is a healthy relationship any longer. When I’m away from you, I crave you – when I’m with you, I feel guilty and sometimes happy to feel that guilt, and that’s just not healthy. I am underperforming at my job because I am too busy tracking all of my pending purchases on eBay. I no longer feel the need to communicate in any interpersonal way with any of my peers. I would rather watch a live webcam feed of what’s happening anywhere in the world than actually go there and see it with my own two eyes. I find myself breaking out in a cold sweat if I can’t hear the message alert when a new email comes in. I have lost all ability to differentiate between fantasy football and real football. I have become an ordained minister of 32 denominations, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the inside of a church. I correspond with people from all over the world, but I doubt if I can pick up a pen and write the alphabet in proper block letters, much less cursive. I need these things back in my life and I can’t get them while I still have you around, so that, my dear, is why we must part ways.
Sincerely,
-me
p.s. – I love you, call me.
Did you know that my fanatical obsession with the meaningless minutiae of sports statistics would lead to an average of 3 hours each day researching fantasy football, fantasy baseball, fantasy hockey, fantasy basketball and fantasy golf? Of course you did. Did you also know that all that time spent basking in the glow of the athletic achievements of others would cause my own muscles to atrophy to a point where I can no longer throw a football, hit a baseball, stand on ice skates, dribble a basketball or swing a golf club? Of course you did.
You should take a cue from disgruntled wives everywhere and not let me access you when I’ve been drinking. If you had just done this for me, protected me from something I wanted when you knew it wasn’t good for me, then I would not need to live in a 4-bedroom house with just you. I would not currently have 4 dressers, 3 coffee tables, an armoire, 2 headboards and a credenza in my garage, all in various stages of undress, but none having gone through the process of stripping, refinishing and selling for which I purportedly bought them. I would not have 4 surround sound systems for my 3 TVs (also procured through you), nor would I have 13 lamps, all different, all bought ON CLEARANCE - LAST DAY, all ugly. I certainly would not have accumulated 37 credit cards, all of them promising the lowest rates for balance transfers, yet none of them managing to live up to those claims. I highly doubt that my kitchen would have become a veritable Coca-Cola collector’s cache without you – I never liked trinkets and do-dads, but you make it so easy to buy anything and everything under the sun that I just go ahead and keep clicking ‘add to cart’…but, hey, that’s why I have 37 credit cards!
Without you, I never would have learned about the online communities of MySpace, Classmates, or Facebook - which would never have allowed any of my psychotic ex-girlfriends to track me down and send me emails ranging from the charmingly deranged to the downright frightening. Thanks to your ability to shrink the globe and open up lines of communication the people I didn’t have time for in my past are now a part of my everyday life. By virtue of having so many ‘friends’ and acquaintances whom I know only through you, I have all but eliminated having to actually deal with people in person. Eh, who needs actual human interaction these days anyway, right? Too much actual face-to-face communication might allow people to share real emotions and opinions, and that couldn’t be a good thing for society, could it? If it weren’t for you, I might still be able to talk to people when I meet them in ‘the outside world’ without my mouse fingers twitching. Without you, my skin wouldn’t have taken on this attractive pallor, a dead giveaway as to how much time we spend together in our dark room, shutting out the light of day.
Email, what about email, you ask? I agree, it’s nice to not have to speak to people any more when I have something colorful to say, much easier to type it in black letters on a white background. It’s especially nice because with email, unlike actual conversation, one leaves interpretation of the tone of the message entirely up to the recipient. This is especially fun when I try to convey sarcasm in a message, and instead of eliciting the laughing reply I anticipated, I get either an expletive-laden tirade or no reply at all. Oh well, if they don’t get me, it’s their loss, right?
Even with all of these wonderful things you’ve given me (and I didn’t even mention the joys of carpal tunnel syndrome, the aching back, the fading eyesight or the permanently kinked neck), I just don’t think that this is a healthy relationship any longer. When I’m away from you, I crave you – when I’m with you, I feel guilty and sometimes happy to feel that guilt, and that’s just not healthy. I am underperforming at my job because I am too busy tracking all of my pending purchases on eBay. I no longer feel the need to communicate in any interpersonal way with any of my peers. I would rather watch a live webcam feed of what’s happening anywhere in the world than actually go there and see it with my own two eyes. I find myself breaking out in a cold sweat if I can’t hear the message alert when a new email comes in. I have lost all ability to differentiate between fantasy football and real football. I have become an ordained minister of 32 denominations, but I can’t remember the last time I saw the inside of a church. I correspond with people from all over the world, but I doubt if I can pick up a pen and write the alphabet in proper block letters, much less cursive. I need these things back in my life and I can’t get them while I still have you around, so that, my dear, is why we must part ways.
Sincerely,
-me
p.s. – I love you, call me.
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