The Online Internet Addicts' Support Group

by J. C. Herz
(Page 2)

To be honest, I'm on the fence about the whole Net addiction/disease analogy. On one hand, I'm not sure that a few hours a day on the Net is really worth worrying about. I mean, a lot of the time I spend on the Net is time I don't spend watching television. No one can argue that the Net is more idiotic than the idiot box, and look how much time people tune into that. Look at how involved they become in the latest twist of Melrose Place. At least Net is interactive, so we can discuss the Hottest Place on Television(tm) on alt.tv.melrose-place.

Unlike television, you can use the Net to communicate with people. Software zillionaires use the Net. And a growing number of businesses would be crippled without it. I'm hooked on Net in the same way that we're all hooked on telephones. So I get a little antsy when I can't pick up my e-mail. Big deal. I see an awful lot of cellular phones in restaurants these days, and that's pretty fucking compulsive if you ask me. So there.

On the other hand, the Net can interfere with your life.

It's not so much the fatigue or how it irrevocably bends your worldview, it's the hours it absorbs. It's unbelievable how time flies when you're on the Net. Contrary to popular belief, however, it is possible to balance Net with a social life, as long as you eliminate one thing: sleep. Sleep has to go, if only because the Net happens at night. Prime Net time is are between midnight and three in the morning, and if you're sleeping, you'll miss it. Anyway, you can't go out and socialize, Net, and sleep. If you juggle the logistics right, you'll manage two out of three (the Net is just part of my plan to explode the myth of fatigue). And honestly, I don't mind not sleeping. It's just disorienting to constantly realize how late it always is.

"Please tell me all the clocks are wrong and it isn't really 4:30 AM and I haven't been on for 3 days straight," wails Tex, a voxer in New York City.

"Sure." replies Drow, a self-described Insane Entity in Colorado, "the clocks are wrong and it isn't really 4:30 AM and you haven't been on for 3 days straight. :) ..world time has been altered by space aliens using their graviton-flux capacitance ray s, it is really 4:30 PM of march 3rd 2034, and you have now been on for over 40 years straight. your phone bill is something over twenty five million dollars, most of which will be covered by life insurance, since you died sometime last week. oh yeah, a nd the cubs won the world series last year, and you missed that too. :) better?"

Net is a black hole for time. Sometimes (OK, often), it's really difficult to tear myself away. For one thing, inertia is not on my side. Not only is it easier to just keep reading, but messages start piling up the minute I log out. The Net has no mercy in this regard. It will bury me under a mountain of information if I neglect it. There's a fear of falling behind that turns the Net into a digital Roach MotelÑnetters log in, but they can't log out. Posts drift through the grey matter like krill through a baleen whale, and you're trapped.

"I'm caught up, I'm afraid to hang up 'cause I know I'll fall behind again," writes a netter caught like a fly in amber. "I just keep telling myself: 'You can logoff, you can logoff, you can logoff...'"

Log on. Make feeble attempt to feed 200 kilobytes of arcane bullshit through brain in stump shredder/meat grinder mode. Log off. Log on. Flashback to a childhood Saturday morning. Cartoons are on, naturally. Sylvester stands outside a door that separates him from the sonic shockwave of a full-throttle 40-piece orchestra. He opens the door, and music blares out of it. He closes the door. S ilence. And thenÑthis is the part I loveÑhe opens and closes it again, three or four times, staring at the camera with an expression of snaggle-toothed dementia. Log off. Go to fridge and open it in hopes of seeing that something new and zany has spontaneously materialized. It hasn't. Go back to computer and log on in hopes that something new and zany has spontaneously materialized. It has. Take another sip of stale cola and read the latest. Mmm...

Occasionally, a hardware problem or glitch in the system forces me off the Net for hours or even days. Withdrawal is not pretty. If a favorite bulletin board is down, it's not uncommon to find a whole pack of netaholics hovering outside on an IRC channel:

I can't get into the system. What's HAPPENED!!#@!*
System's down. We're locked out.
What's WRONG!?
Is it serious?
When will they FIX it?
This sux.

Meanwhile, I keep trying. The system doesn't want to cooperate, doesn't know me, and couldn't care less about my pressing need to collect e-mail and catch up on the Computer Underground Digest (Broken! Dial. Broken! Glare at screen. Dial. No carrier. Dial). I continue to dial frantically until the hedonistic-rat-pushing-button-for-electrical-stimulus-at-expense-of-food analogy kicks in and I finally give up in disgust. I pace about my room, halfheartedly knawing at a wedge of stale pizza and pondering the fallibility of equipment, software, the phone company, and the human spirit. The malevolence of the Universe is self-evident, and a bitter funk permeates my immediate surroundings until the system is once again up, at which point, birds burst into song and the world is once again a happy place. I relish the modem's every pop and whine. The log-in prompt winks flirtatiously. I type my password with an overwhelming sense of relief.

Wouldn't want to miss that IRC Recovery meeting.

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