This is something that I’ve been thinking about for awhile. How do you think of the Internet? Is it social for you? A source of information? A simple tool? A burden? A toxic place filled with assholes?

All of the above?

For me, I have a hard time narrowing down what the Internet even is. Oh, I know the technologies behind it, the hardware and software that are actually “The Internet”, but like many things that have spawned from the human condition, The Internet has taken on a much more transcendent place in our world. It is less abuot the technology, and how you experience the technology.

And like with everything else, we all experience it differently.

For some people, the Internet is a marvel. For some people, it’s horrific place. For most of us, I assume, it’s a mixture of both. Like in life, the Internet has mirrored humans in almost every way. There’s the great and the good, those parts that make you wonder how we ever did without it; and then there are the horrible and the horrifying, like cyber bullying and online exploitation of children. The Internet simultaneously enables us to do things that were never possible before in a good and a bad way.

The problem that this spawns is that we often forget that our experience on the Internet isn’t the same as everyone else’s. And that assumption, often leads to uncomfortable situations.

We have this thing that we could use for incredible good, and we have done so, but we’ve also used it for horrifying things. What does that say about the Internet? Does it make it good? Or does it make it bad? And how does its influence on humanity effect us? Because we have changed. Maybe it would be better to say we’ve evolved.

Since the Internet has spread to most corners of the world, our attention span has eroded and our ability to be horrible to each other has increased. Even folk who are good and honest in the real world find themselves being assholes to others while online. Even after 40 years of the Internet, we still feel like “online” isn’t the “real world.” This leads to a lot of those mixed experiences I talked about earlier. This is due to perceived anonymity and a lack of true consequences, and we all know it. You can get away with stuff online that you would never even try in the physical world.

All of this is to say that The Internet is yours, and it is mine, and despite the title, it is real life. And because that is true, it requires us to treat it as such. Don’t be an asshole on the Internet, even if you can get away with it.

Honestly, I just started writing this post on a whim, with no real idea where it would end up. But I knew that I had some scattered thoughts on how the Internet is perceived, and how that perception changes from person to person. I’ve talked to some people who have had horrible experiences with people online, and they have a completely different opinion on the Internet than I do. And I’m friends with some people who consider the Internet their entire life, and who would be lost without it.

These differing viewpoints just spawned this ramble. I’m not even sure if it made sense or not, but that’s the point of a ramble I guess.