The internet is kind of a confusing place sometimes. Really, it depends on where you hang out, though, unlike in real life, you don’t have a map that tells you how to get to the over-your-head-zen-musicians and away from horrible back alley drugs sold by the Russian Mafia. Still, assuming you aren’t hanging out only in the seedy underbelly, filled with terrible porn, you can come across some very interesting and thought provoking stuff.
No, I’m not talking about NASA’s latest thing on Mars. Well, alright, that is interesting, but I maintain that NASA should be sending colonists there by now, so I’m a little underwhelmed. No, what I’m talking about is people! Every now and again it just hits me that the internet, the whole damned thing, is chalked full of people, doing their thing and being people. Sometimes, this sucks. Some people suck, you can’t get around it. Some people are crazy, and they at least have that going for them. Other people though, are awesome.
Awesome people are all over the place and they are doing awesome things. Things that don’t get on MSN.com; things that don’t make Fox news. There are people who do the craziest most wonderful stuff for no other reason than it makes them and other people happy. There’s a lot more on YouTube than idiots blowing up soda bottles and kitten videos. Last week, Anita Sarkeesian, of Feminist Frequency, put out a video that shifted my perspective toward women’s roles in video games in a huge way. You can watch it here. This was the first part in her series Women vs. Tropes in video games and I am very glad it happened. I’m going to talk more about that in a later post, but its going to (hopefully) be more involved and also related to my own story telling and lesson’s that I’m learning in that field.
I just bumbled into Amanda Palmer’s site and have to remind myself that I should be writing my synopsis for Impervious, not absorbing a new outlook on life. Well, maybe not that drastic but the woman has ideas. Powerful ones. She’s got a new TED talk (the source of my internet bumblry*). ”Old Seth” would have written her off as a hippy, and alright, her ideas still seem a little hippy to me, but that’s probably more because some of them scare the already frightened introvert inside of me. ”Today’s Seth” is very interested in what she has to say and what she’s doing. Among other things she’s tossing the whole piracy thing right into the industry’s face. She’s also talking about things like bullying, which as some people know, is really close to my heart. We might not agree on everything (I haven’t read everything she’s got on there yet) but I think I’m definitely to a point where I’m willing to listen.
And there’s even more; on and on, bigger and broader, as I widen my social browsing. More ideas, more people, more experiences to read, watch and listen to. Tonight, I just had that moment of, “Whoa” and became newly fascinated by this technological terror that we’ve created. So, maybe its just the wine talking, but you go Internet. You keep being weird. You keep being original. You keep thinking and putting yourself out there. Who knows, maybe someday even I will have something worth saying. For now, I’ve got some writin’ of my own to do.
*I’m an author, I’ll make up whatever ferplexing words I want to.