e*moticons

Thought Catalog (via the always stunning Mind Hacks) has a short reflection on the Internet's rather unexamined capacity to alter existential states. Though there are tumbling stacks of articles on how social networking has besmirched manners, etiquette and attention spans, there seems to be less said about the emotions--anxieties, rather--that the Internet has authored. That's a strange manifestation of artificial intelligence or a new weighted-factor for the Turning test. One's venues, perches for expressing and maintaining one's image have increased considerably with the new electronic real estate, and there is a strange, unrelenting pressure to update and to be the first on the scene. One should perhaps trust in all the redundancies built into the system for a bit of solace. If exposure is missed one place, the same item will mostly be re-run, recycled or re-posted elsewhere a little behind the curve. Nothing, in fact, ever goes away, notwithstanding the gnawing obligation to treat something as actionably otherwise. The internet is not like television, telethons, or radio in this respect. Neither are emails--discounting their speedier derivatives--the same as a phone call: they are designed, whether intended or not, to be answered at one's pace and not instantaneously refreshed.