The Internet Was a Place
Or, Why I Stopped Writing Part II
The first piece I ever wrote here was called How the Internet Breaks Our Brains. Instead of writing an explanation or what this newsletter was to be1 I started by writing about how the internet, because we are not cognitively adapted for it, creates false perspective in our minds. Well, physician, heal thyself.
The most awful thing I’ve seen on television recently was a scene in Welcome to Wrexham that shows Rob McElhenney living through excoriating pain of being a Philadelphia sports fan from October 2022 - February 2023. It is a level of pain no other sports fans can possibly imagine. It was, however, the final justification for me having moved to Austin. Because living in Philadelphia during that would have broken me. The pall of malaise and misery that falls over the city after yet another depressing loss. The bile that spews out of sports talk radio. The sheer agony of it all.
I recently had the weirdest version of The Test Dream. I was back in law school, it was late November, and I realized I had a law review article due, a mock trial, and three final exams. But unlike the usual version of this dream, I was not unprepared. I had not realized I never attended class. It was the sheer magnitude of it. When I woke up, I realized that this was just an accurate portrayal of law school. Over 13 years removed, it was perplexing for me to look at it this way when this was normal for me back then. When I told it to friends in law school it didn’t make sense because they were in the law school bubble.
When you’re in law school, it becomes your life. You mainly interact with law students, lawyers, or law professors. This is just your life. It’s in part why many law students and lawyers – though, let’s be clear, not all! – develop a blasé attitude to what they’re doing. If I list my accomplishments, I never once consider “graduating law school” or “passing the bar exam” as one of them. Because most of the people I know did this! It’s normal.
We’re awful at distinguishing our reality from the greater reality. Despite my pledge to repeat myself more often, I’m not going to rewrite the article I already linked to. What I am going to say is that we all do it. The internet is not creating something new for us. The law student who loses perspective about what life outside of law school is like, or the sports fan wallowing in localized misery, is not much different from the person who spends too much time on social media. They’re losing perspective. And they’re letting their mind trick them. There’s a concept in mindfulness about following thoughts, and although most people who go down that path do so because they want their mind to stop following painful thoughts, you learn that your mind also does the same with pleasant thoughts. To return to my original analogy, when the Eagles choke, what I’m confronted with her in Austin is other stimuli, other thoughts. I’m not walking past a newsstand or overhearing conversations on the subway or running into other fans who want to discuss the game. Instead, it’s, well, that but about tacos and there’s no subway. Similarly, when we had our one moment of happiness, I was deprived of stimuli that would lead me to chase thoughts I wanted to chase. Both experiences are lessened – to my delight or disappointment - because my mind could not run after such things as easily. It’s the same reason you unfollow your ex on social media. You want to maintain perspective.
The difference between the real world and the internet is that the stimuli I am receiving in the real world is largely outside of my hands, except at the macro level. For example, if I wanted to be immersed in the tech startup scene, I can make the decision to move to San Francisco. And I’d receive more related stimuli there than I would if I moved to Tulsa. But otherwise, out of my hands. The internet is almost entirely in my hands.
In many ways, this is a great part of the internet experience. If you want to get into something new, you can create a reality filled with related stimuli! If you decide that you are now all about baking French pastries, you can craft a fake reality full of French pastry stimuli. This is awesome.
Or at least, it can be, if we maintain perspective. Because regardless of whether it is in the digital space or the meat space, getting carried away with thoughts is potentially troublesome. Losing perspective on reality is not good. And at the end of the day, we are always – at least for the foreseeable future – going to live in the meat space.
There is a picture that is making its way around the meme world that I wish to discuss:
Although unfathomable to the younglings, this is nostalgia for the rest of us. It’s also a reminder of how the internet used to be. When I began using it, I would need to go to the family computer and dial into the internet. And since no one had cell phones, if anyone had to make or was expecting a phone call, the internet was a no go.2 You can see how this would limit internet usage. I eventually had my own computer and a dedicated phoneline for the internet. This removed some of those limits but, at the same time, if I got up from that desk, that was it. Because I have object permanence, I won’t say the internet ceased to exist to me, but you get the picture. I was no longer in that world.
I often refer to the period of 1998-2002 as the time when I “wasn’t on the internet.” That’s nonsense, I was on the internet a lot. But far less than the previous five years for the simple reason that I was in college and physically not at home more often. I was at school or at work, and my ability to use the internet there was limited.
The only three people in the world who remember where they were when they found out the Philadelphia Phillies traded Wayne Gomes for Felipe Crespo are Wayne Gomes, Felipe Crespo, and me. Because on July 27th, 2001, while riding somewhere in the swamps of Jersey, my hunger for sports news made me realize I could use my cell phone to access the internet. I didn’t realize what that meant at that time, nor even shortly after. The next few years, the internet was still mainly a place. But cell phone browsers and data were constantly improving, laptops were becoming ubiquitous, and Wi-Fi started covering the Earth. The internet as a place was dying. Soon, the internet was everywhere.
I’m a man who loves a catchphrase and my longest lasting one was referring to smartphones as “the repository of all human knowledge in our pocket.” Apparently, friends still use this line! And that’s the positive side of it. The negative side of it is that this created reality was now always accessible to me. No longer would I live my life then go to a specific place and experience the internet and then leave it, back to my life. Now, the internet is no longer a place, it’s just intertwined with my life.
I’ve written before about why I don’t want a world where we always have smartphones with us. I also don’t want a world where I always have my phone on. Whenever I have my phone off – not on silent, but off – life is better. It feels more real. I am forced to experience the world as it exists in front of me. But as soon as whatever compels me to keep it off is over, it goes back on. And I jump back into another world.
One of the lessons I learned from the pandemic is that when everyone on the internet is talking about the same thing, I should turn the internet off. So, in October, I began turning the internet off. Not entirely. I still needed to consume sports news. I still needed to look stuff up. And I’m, ya know, running my own law practice so the internet is pretty important for that! But otherwise, I turned it off. And there were things and people I missed. But it’s still been worth it.
I am exposed to less negative stimuli. I am more present in my life. But most interesting was what happens when you unplug yourself from the “discourse” of the internet (which always means the subgenre that you choose to expose yourself to). It becomes alien. I’m not really a “have a side” guy on things like politics or culture war, although I did follow all this. But unplugging means when you do encounter it, it feels like stumbling into a 1997 Star Trek chatroom and seeing people debate whether a Vor’cha class cruiser could defeat a D’deridex class warbird: you don’t understand half the words and you’re confused why everyone is screaming.3 This isn’t limited to culture war or electoral politics either. I cannot overstate how many times I see people in other fields – including tech – posting things that seem detached from reality.
And what you consume shapes how you think. Towards the end of my last run, much of my writing was being shaped by low quality content I was consuming that was separating me from reality. Paradoxically, spending too much time on the internet was making it more difficult for me to write about the internet.
There’s a flipside, which is I’ve missed much of the best content – apologies to those of you whose Substacks I haven’t kept up on – as I’ve reworked these habits.4 But part of the beauty of the internet as a place is that when you can only visit a place for so long, you learn to go to the best parts. If you only have one day in New York City, you wouldn’t spend it all in Times Square.
Two years ago, I finally bought a high-quality chef’s knife. It is one of my best purchases ever. It has also cut me numerous times. And I certainly wouldn’t want to carry it everywhere or take it to bed.
I love the internet. It’s changed my life in oh so many ways. It is one of the best tools we have created. But it is a tool. Although there are many ways in which having the internet constantly at my fingertips is good – or at least convenient – sometimes I feel like it’s not the proper use of this tool. I don’t know if I could ever fully return to having the internet be a place. But I think my life would be healthier if I did. And I wouldn’t be shocked if that was true for you, dear reader. So, consider making the internet a place again.
Just so long as every week you read, like, share, and comment on these articles. Let’s keep perspective on what’s important.
Although I eventually wrote one and it sucked so I rewrote it for next week.
I wrote in the original piece about how there’s a qualitative difference between dial up internet and broadband because the role that multimedia plays in our cognitive functioning. But even from a sheer quantity perspective, the amount of internet you could consume was much lower back then.
Also, the answer is obviously no.
Also, writing on the internet means I need to be on the internet to market myself so, well, I guess that’s a thing I must do now. And reply to your comments!
This says so much of what I feel. I was a dept. chair in a university when the Internet arrived, and people WANTED those desks.
Sometimes when a power outage looms I rather hope it will be 10 days as that will be enough time for people to remember the times they don't remember. The panic last power outage I saw people frantically in their cars to charge their phones. That that was the first they people did seemed sad to me.
A few years ago, on vacation, I accidentally took my phone into the ocean (it was in the non-waterproof pocket of my Tommy Bahamas beach chair, which I used to sit in the surf). For nearly a week I didn’t have the thing. It was great.
Ultimately smartphones are still such a new thing, hopefully the shine will wear off a bit and we’ll collectively arrive at a better, tool-based use of them.