RSSFriday B.S.: How Many Times has the Internet Killed?
May 14
Life in Digital Comments Off
The internet has caused catastrophic social damage globally as it has taken over our lives. Our social vocabulary has morphed, our ability to connect with one another face to face has eroded, and our attention has shortened to a speck of time, the merest instant that passes unstimulated becomes a colossal waste. But while some changes are at least inevitable (language is a fluid construct and social mores adjust with the times), there are certain phenomenon for whom the death knell has struck with the coming of the internet.
There’s no such thing as reliable news media any more. The scoop has been replaced with spurious (or at least dubious) tweets and what may be my least favorite internet convention of all time, the trending topic (believe it or not, not original to twitter -- yahoo has been doing it for years).
It was over for the scoop the first time a celebrity was outed in the social media web. Not that humiliating celebrities is something new. No, in fact, before the internet, this kind of fodder was reserved almost exclusively for the Star Magazines and National Enquirers of the world. Star Magazine‘s headline this week: Exclusive: Glee’s Matthew Morrison in Cheating Scandal. National Enquirer posted a similar accusation of Matt Lauer. It’s a testament to the enduring voyeurism of our cultural wandering eyeball that both print magazines are still in business albeit with online companions trying to compete with Perez Hilton. (Let’s face it, he should just own the Associated Press).
But the coming of the internet with its vast news sources signaled the end for the scoop. These days, there is no one place to get source material. By the time you get to work in the morning, every who wants to already knows anything there is to talk about around the water cooler. Same for when you get home from work. Nobody can mark the definitive time a story broke, no matter who claims to take credit for it. There are too many avenues to the same information. And if that’s not scary enough, think about this:
Perez is actually reporting more factual information than false. Would you ever say that the National Enquirer? It’s a scary world. That’s why outing celebrities is such a big deal. It marked a turning point in our trash-talking, celebrity-stalking culture where the truth is vastly more interesting than the crap that someone is making up.
On the other side of the coin, stalking…er, tracking someone down actually got easier with the internet at the expense of the phone book. The end of the phone directory came from, ironically I say, the cell phone. Smart phones bring the web browser to you. Instantaneous driving directions, food recommendations, local address look-up and phone numbers and now who needs a bulky print phone directory? (It’s a pretty reasonable question to ask why they still print phone books, but they do).
The key to understanding the death of the phone book lies in acknowledging that the smart phone only made an extraordinary problem worse. Print media was already facing possible extinction with the cost of paper and printing only going on up, and readership moving in droves to online magazines. (Let’s face it, any third world society that doesn’t have routine internet access isn’t going to print the Yellow Pages either). And caught in the middle was a little social institution we call the phone directory, delivered to you once a year and tossed down like a dead deer on your stoop. It used to be the place to go for coupons, to compare local restaurants, hell, even to look up someone’s phone number.
But the one thing you could never do in the Yellow Pages was look up someone’s cell phone number. That was a segment that managed to stay out of the phone directory, and the moment of defeat was already written in the stars the minute cell phone numbers were considered, and later affirmed, to be private. Then the internet came along, sniffing around the body of a fallen warrior. The web stuck a gun to the phone book’s temple and fired.
You can still use the phone book on the internet (the Yellow Pages has tried to carve their niche in the market) but who really does? Search engines are more direct, and with user comments the norm now, anecdotal evidence is always in fresh supply. And if that’s not scary enough, think about this:
We probably still need the phone book. Think about it. How many phone numbers do you have memorized? Your phone may be a wealth of knowledge, but you have trained your brain that retaining the information isn’t necessary. I’m guessing if your phone went dead tonight, you could call your mother and that’s about it.
So call her.
The internet is a killer, and it’s going to keep killing. Newspapers are already dead. How long before we no longer need movie theaters? Shopping malls? Schools? Think it’s crazy, think again. Anything that can be done out there is being replicated in here, and in some cases, better. Our social interface will be massacred and in its place, we will all be wired in and strung out. So plug in and enjoy the ride.
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Andrew Marx is the author of Whisper in the Walls, available to download free beginning May 18 at www.whispernovella.com.
