I have had this bookmarked for a very long time.
http://www.stileproject.com/feb9-2001.html#ij
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I am an Information Junkie of the worst possible kind.
But I am not alone. We are a new breed of addicts that did not exist fifteen years ago. Once the web was out of it's early infancy, and photographs and multimedia became more prevalent on the web, we started to get addicted.
Once computers were cheap enough for every family to afford one, the addiction started to take hold of me, and our society overall. Forget what you've heard about being addicted to heroin and nicotine, this is far worse, for there is no cure for the Information Junkie. To cure him you would have to replace his brain.
I define an Information Junkie as someone who NEEDS to be near a computer at all times. No other form of mass communication will do. Television? Don't make me fucking laugh.
An Information Junkie is someone who breaks out in a cold sweat when they can't connect to the Internet. Someone who cares more about the people in chat rooms than their real friends, if they have any at all. Someone who knows where to get all the porn they could possible want for free, but doesn't, because they've seen it all before. Someone who has seen every single "funny picture" that your friends forward you in e-mail a million times over, and who's personal hygiene suffers due to laziness.
It was a slow process at first. Maybe your dad brought home a computer from work, or got the family a PC for Christmas. Wow, something to type your essays for school on. Big fucking deal. Then one of your friends might have showed you that you could use your computer for different sorts of things.
EVIL things.
I swear to fucking god I never knew that women blew horses when I was 13. Who the hell would have thought that was possible? It wasn't until I was 18 that I realized that men blew horses too! Holy shit! This is fucked up. Stop the press! People have sex with animals?
That's not all they do. The Internet has shown me the darkest side of humanity. More strange and twisted than I ever thought possible. This reminds me of a quote I once heard: When you look into the abyss, the abyss looks back into you.
You can't walk away from this without being changed for better or for worse. Every single experience that you have in your life molds your overall psyche, and forms the way you will react to future life experiences. With that said, how do you think being exposed to the darker side of life will change you? Believe me, you won't become no Marry fucking Poppins.
I'm not saying that it's all bad though. I would rather know what happens in this world than live my life in a state of ignorance thinking that everyone is content, bellies are full and one day we'll all join hands and sing in perfect harmony. I don't know why, but I want to know the truth. I can't live a life filled with ignorance and lies.
I think I'm getting ahead of myself here. Let's go back a few years, right before I got into High School when people still didn't know what a dot-com was. I was always interested in computers, ever since we had an Atari and Colecovision in the house. I remember getting an Apple IIc for my birthday one year. That was pretty cool. I was 7 years old and still had that sparkle in my eye. But nothing, absolutely nothing prepared me for the Internet.
I was born to do this site. I don't consider myself a writer, webmaster or any of that nonsense.
I consider myself to be the master of ceremonies in the three ring circus of freakshow-like media. I am the grumpy old man in the corner of the pub, commenting in a harsh yet brutally truthful way on everything he sees. No one else was doing it exactly the way I wanted it done, so I just did it myself.
Let's talk about the constant exchange of thought and emotion with pseudo-friends. Whether you use ICQ, AOL Instant Messenger, chat rooms or e-mail it doesn't matter. The waves of pornography, satire and tech media that washes across your face each day will change you. The socializing and cyber-wars that you take part in online will change you. The comfortably numb feeling you get from having the light from the monitor dance across your face at night will change you. For good or bad, it is really up to you.
You know how they say that the first time you do heroin is the best because you get higher than you will ever get again? The virgin high. That's what it was like for me, young Information Junkie, when I first logged on to the Internet oh-so-many years ago. I've never done heroin, mind you, but I can guarantee you that I wouldn't get addicted. I'd shoot it into my arm and laugh. This is nothing, this is a joke. Why? Because I have an addiction that far outshadows any other addiction that humanity has ever created. Crack and heroin do not hold a candle to seeing every single WHAZZUP! parody under the sun.
This is the kind of addiction that makes you feel empty inside unless you are constantly feeding it. This addiction is of the need to constantly see new media 24/7, every single day for the rest of my life until I die. I consume words, images, videos, audio files... I become one with the media until I can't bare to look at the screen anymore. How did I first know that I had a problem? When I'd start to skip school to come home and use my computer.
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