Tuesday, July 14, 2015

The Lust for Internet

There is a lot in the head that is not coming out. Perhaps that has been articulated in the head, but has not made its way to the blog. Not made to the eyes of so many people ready, and waiting to judge, help, ask, rip, challenge, debate and suggest - none for which I am either prepared or willing. Because for some reason, i believe i will not be able to express, or reveal. Because for some reason, I am not prepared to debate, justify, rationalize...

I often end up thinking that (my) thoughts are so volatile. Sometimes, in my head, they are explosive and soothing at the same time. Explosive because they may appear to be morally outrageous if expressed, and soothing because they have taken some form through a known language within the head, that gives a sense of peace to the restless mind. They are almost like letters ready to be despatched, but stationed in the head. What happens when letters already written to someone lie waiting long, and perhaps never get a chance to travel to whom they are addressed to? What, in this sense, happens to letters in the head that are not despatched out for long? 

Tremendous amount of energy is required to translate the raw explosive thoughts that occur / get formulated in the mind, into the language of diplomacy so that that they hurt no one, they are well taken and create the right impact in the reality of the world. Such energy is something that I don't want to yet put in. The real world almost always demands to sugar coat your thoughts. You can not express criticism freely, for it would mean you have to be ready to accept it freely too. The fear of hurting forces me to be silent on most occassions. 

The amount of stalking by people on the internet unimaginable. Gone are the days when one could be a stranger on / to the internet. The internet, once allowed me to talk to myself. The internet was a place to escape, wander and get lost into. Today it has become a destination! It has strangely become a place where both - becoming anonymous and becoming popular plays out at the same time, creating a situation of crisis. Being pulled by such opposing thoughts, any idea of identity is splintered, scattered. In such a situation, what does one post on this blog?

I am becoming increasingly insecure of consequences of being stalked. It is irritating when people who have not known you for long enough try to figure you out and pass on an opinion. When people don't know you, they interpret your actions and words very differently, sometimes unnecessarily complicating it. The attention that your words and actions attract on the internet is again, encouraging and alarming. Encouraging because you are prompted to put more out there, because it brings you popularity, but alarming because you make yourself more available to be misinterpreted.

What do people, who otherwise do not have the outreach, but the belief that they are competent, do? The internet shall always remain then a brothel of sorts, where lust is mistaken for love. It is a lust for asserting presence through and in the immaterial world. We, who exist on the internet, strive for making our presence prominent in the virtual. Our own virtual constructs soon shall encompass us by becoming bigger than our very reality. These make us comparable to the powerful, to the frequently demanded, and fill in a gap that we have ourselves imagined within us. Indeed, it has to be the imagined that has to fill up the virtual. 

I realize I am getting theoretical to an extent that only I understand my words and statements. It would be good, perhaps to quickly list the things I wanted to write about, did last week and so on.

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I attended two talks last week, one by Sanjay Mohe at KRVIA and the other by Henry Jenkins at the Godrej Culture Lab in Vikroli. Both talks were great. I didnot take notes. I am sure these will be available on their respective websites. I might talk about them sometime, when I have researched more, and feel appropriate to cite them. Meanwhile, I must close this post. I don't know if this writing is making sense at all!

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