You can stop reading now. Seriously. It’s okay. This is—and this isn’t an exact number, mind you—the 1,453,009,432,350-somethingth blog post about how the internet is distracting.
That the internet is a major distraction in modern life is not a surprise to anyone who’s spent more than five minutes with internet access. What’s truly shocking, however, is how wide a gulf there is between what’s possible with the internet, and what is actually accomplished. Which I guess is true of the entire human experience.
The internet is unique in that it offers the means to achieve your dreams, right alongside everything an intrepid procrastinator or self-saboteur could ever need to decimate those dreams. The distraction and the tool are one in the same. Microsoft Word, the blank canvas upon which I can write words that could literally change my life, is as easy to get to as Donald Trump’s Twitter feed. Google can take me to thousands of articles about how to make a go at writing professionally just as quickly as it can take me to a contentious political article, complete with a vitriolic comments section.
The internet is the greatest means of learning, creation, communication, and genuine insight that has ever been conceived, let alone actually created. It is a tool unlike any other, and it can be used to help us construct all manner of wondrous things. I use it, consistently, to distract and aggravate myself. I am constantly checking on things that I do not care about. And, in this incessant crawl through the muck of the web, there are testimonials aplenty that confirm I am not the only one.
When I was a kid, my work ethic was much, much better. The internet did not destroy my attention span. I did that on my own. The internet simply makes it so easy to continue flitting away my time, and so hard to stay on the wagon of productivity.
When I was a kid, I procrastinated with Super Nintendo, and the Nintendo 64 after it. But once I sat down to work, all I had was paper and pencil in front of me, along with whatever books or notes I needed. It was easier to “get in the zone” so to speak. I could pull myself away from my distractions. Now my distractions are always at my fingertips. It’s like if you were trying to eat better, and instead of the cookies being tucked away in the high cabinet, they were taped to your damn hands. Sure, you could reach for the celery stick and the hummus on your desk, or you could just raise your cookie hand to your mouth and eat, you weak-willed failure.
And to make the same point again, what’s more infuriating than anything is that the internet is such a wonderful resource. Wasting your time on something mindless is bad, but turning something so wonderful and powerful into something mindless has to be some kind of sin.
And really, the same can be said for all of us gorging ourselves on internet rage and self-defeating articles on productivity (You want to know the thing that all successful people do? They don’t read productivity articles). We can use our time and our minds to actually make things, or even just to enjoy ourselves! I use the internet because I’m just trying to take a 30 second break from my work. 30 minutes of useless clicking later, and not only have I not worked, I haven’t even taken a true break or done anything enjoyable. Had I known I was going to waste 30 whole minutes, I could’ve read a damn book! Or watched a show! Something, anything other than getting up to speed on the latest rage-inducing celebrity tweet.
I’d like to take the internet back. And my time. And my mind. I’d like to stop having to apologize to the people I have yet to get back to, people who are important to me, because I was lost in the wilds of Tumblr. So this next paragraph is my attempt to get ahead of that urge to dive down the rabbit hole into nothingness and frustration. It is a summary of the entire internet, applicable at any point in time, for all time:
Politicians of any and all parties suck. People are still racist, sexist, anti-semetic, homophobic, trans-phobic, and generally awful. And other people are not, and they’re gaining headway despite the seemingly insurmountable weight of intolerance and history. Corporations are selfish and greedy (which isn’t surprising, as it’s how they got to be corporations in the first place). Someone watched your favorite show before you, and they’re talking about that thing that happened. And the earth is fucked unless Elon Musk slips off of his toilet and has a brainstorm for a flux capacitor of his own. Also, celebrities are saying things and taking pictures. There. You’re all caught up.
Get to work.