I wrote most of this earlier this week but didn’t finish until today, hence the outdated references. Way to go, me! Sorry, y’all. I had to be all responsible and crap; aka, I did work I actually get paid for. And it was nowhere near as fun as writing for you guys.
Today is some kind of Internet protest day with no Wikipedia and a bunch of dormant blogs. Politics, money, assholes, and legislation: Not a great combination. Anyway, I figure if I post today, y’all are more likely to read it, seeing as your options are so limited. Plus, I plan to take advantage of my freedom of speech while I still have it, because apparently we’re about to be de-Internet-ized back to the 80s. May as well buy a “beeper,” a 15-pound “car phone” with a shoulder strap, and some acid-washed jeans today so I can beat the time-warp shopping rush. Shit. Now I have to get dressed and leave the house to go shopping. Can’t order that crap on Amazon if there is no Amazon. Wow. I’m living in the Matrix. I think. Never did see that one.
Anyway…
Sheldon: Do you know where the phrase "Jibber jabber" comes from? Penny: Oh my God. You're about to jibber jabber about jibber jabber.
So, what is all this Internet-SOPA-PIPA jibber jabber? I gotta tell you, web dwellers, I try to stay well informed on most things, but on this one, I just have no fucking idea. Sometimes, there’s just so much going on that I kind of miss an issue du jour, and this is one of those times. So forgive me for having no actual info to share. I’ll just say this one thing. I believe in freedom of speech no matter who is doing the talking or what that person is saying. I believe that even the most depraved, homophobic, despicable, moronic, racist xenophobe has the right to climb up on his or her soapbox (Is that even a thing anymore? I bet people use plastic milk crates now.) and spout out a stream of verbal idiocy any time the mood strikes, so long as doing so isn’t likely to cause harm to others. That is, civil rights are relative: your civil rights extend just up to the edge of the point at which exercising those rights infringes on the rights of others.
I wonder if anyone still makes soapboxes. I kinda want one just so I can climb up on it in the grocery store and see what people do.
Ok, I think I said more than one thing (huge surprise). But you get my point. Freedom of speech is a right, not a privilege in this country, or, at least, it’s supposed to be. The way things are going, I’m starting to wonder whether those things we’ve long considered absolute rights are really all that sacrosanct to those in office anymore.
When Monstanto executives are being put into White-House-Appointed positions in the FDA and banks get bailed out while homeowners drown in debt, when we have a healthcare industry that pays no attention to the food industry (and a food industry that doesn’t care about our health), when access to well-rounded educational materials and appropriate sexual and reproductive information is limited or denied, when we actually have to discuss whether to present creationism alongside evolution in public schools when only one of those theories belongs in a science class while the other belongs in church (Why not teach creationism in home economics? It has no more or less business in there than it does in biology class.), something is seriously wrong with our society.
Perhaps we all had more time to think about these things back before the Internet, so we were better able to follow politics and keep better tabs on our legislators despite the comparative lack of information. Perhaps having to work to obtain that information made it feel even more important and urgent. I mean, think about it for a minute. What did you do with all the time you spend NOT on the Internet before there was an Internet to be on? Ok, that was convoluted. What I mean is, we’re grown adults living in high school via Facebook. Who does or says what to whom and when some pseudo-acquaintance defriended a colleague…? This shit was not on adults’ radars 20 years ago. Not even 10 years ago. But it’s a daily part of life now. And it feels important, even if a lot of it is only important because we participate. If no one used social media, we’d all live in the present more.
We didn't spend our time trying to out-smartass our phones in the 80s. I'm still not sure whether that's a point for the 80s or a point for the nows.
Without unlimited cell minutes and free long distance, we’d all invest ourselves more fully in the people around us, not the people in our “networks.” But that’s not how it is today. So we have daily life relationships with people who would, a mere decade or so ago, have been pen pals and twice-a-year phone contacts. We live outside our physical boundaries. We are overly invested in more than that which surrounds us. And it distracts us from the bigger picture. It keeps us so involved in our superficially expanded personal circles that we are too busy to get involved with and stay informed on the issues of the day.
Gilead looks a lot like North America if we were ruled by the Taliban. It scares the crap out of me.
On the other hand, an online-wifi-free-long-distance-instant-messaging life is exactly what enables me to connect with Northman and Jerry and all of you. Freedom of speech and lack of Internet censorship allow me to tell you that Northman sent me two new sexy videos of Quinn last week and that they were spectacular. You think a censored blogger could tell you she had mind-blowing orgasms watching videos of her long-distance lover having his own across the country? I sure as hell don’t.
There’s bad shit on the Internet. Sure. But there’s good shit on here too. And the Internet brings the crazies together just as much as it connects the “normal” people. Not sure where my blog and I fall in that spectrum, but so be it. Until we’re living in Gilead, I’ll keep writing.
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