The Internet Has Ruined Everything We Ever Loved (ish)5

by Matt Dunbar

The cultural destruction wrought by the internet has reached truly apocalyptic proportions. The death of unbiased, objective news delivered exclusively by white males; the reduction of teenage attention spans to the length of half a Tosh.O punchline; and, perhaps most insidious, the very existence of iJustine threatens to unspool the moral fabric upon which our modern social order is built.

Also this is pretty terrifying.

This would not be the first time that a seemingly beneficial technology plunged a civilization into an irrevocable cultural nosedive. Indeed, contrary to what Fox News may tell you, it was neither Mexican immigrants nor mandatory orgy Mondays that ultimately doomed the Roman Empire. It was a retweeted Emperor Nero nip slip.

But while the miserable vestiges of the mainstream media devote story after story to dying newspapers, online porn addictions and toddlers with carpel tunnel, the real travesty of the internet lie in the litany of small, day-to-day pleasures Generation Gawker will never even get the chance to experience.

I refer to my generation of twenty-somethings as the “straddle generation,” as we experienced the first half of our adolescence blissfully sans internet and the second half writing in our Live Journal about Evanescence. Us “straddlers” are unique in that unlike our younger siblings we enjoy a vague recollection of what life was like before Facebook, and unlike our parents we got rid of our Encarta CD-ROM 15 years ago.

But whenever my fellow straddlers and I reminisce about our formative teenage years, we more often than not conclude that some of our fondest memories (late-night conversations at Chili’s, getting stranded in Reno, unexpected pregnancy scares) would not have occurred if at the time we simply had access to an iPhone (if you haven’t got the PlanB app yet, get on that shit). The overwhelming ease and convenience of the internet has collectively robbed us of some of the small and underappreciated pleasures of life that accompanied its little frustrations. Just like the fact that your grandfather had to walk 35 miles uphill in the snow dodging Nazi rifle fire to get to elementary school, the fact that I once had to know all of Bill Murray’s filmography by rote without referencing IMDB ultimately made me a better person.

Before I delve into the specifics of why I mourn for our nation’s youth, I’d like to preempt some snarky commenter out there by fully acknowledging the irony of writing a list of things the internet has ruined – on the internet. As a slave to my audience’s favored medium, I had no choice in the matter. And yes, if given a Delorean and some gullible Libyans, I would much prefer going back to the way things were pre-internet and do what other writers of my talent and disposition did – patiently wait for rejection letters from the New Yorker.

So with this in mind, let me present…

1. The Unappreciated Joy of Arguing over a Meaningless and Obscure Fact for an Inordinate Amount of Time

This may be the internet’s single most devastating casualty, especially for nerds. How soon we forget, but fiercely debating the name of Benicio Del Toro’s character in The Usual Suspects (Fenster) or the exact phrasing of a Bart Simpson quote would occupy several hours, if not days, and serve to forge the deepest bonds of friendship – or sever them completely. (Let me take this opportunity to apologize to Amanda Donner for breaking up with her in 10th grade because she was “so sure” the kid in Temple of Doom was called “Short Hound” and not “Short Round.”)

In order to resolve these arguments, a venture to the video store or Barnes & Noble was often necessary, and the victorious party could lord their superior knowledge over their friend for years, if not decades. Thus the stakes for actually knowing your shit were raised. I knew that if I was wrong in challenging my dad on a baseball trivia question, he would likely disinherit me. Thus, I was the only the 11-year old alive who knew Sandy Koufax’s career postseason win-loss record by heart.

Wikipedia has gutted that experience to its lifeless, joyless core. Now a debate that once would require at least opening up your grandparents’ Encyclopedia Britannica and at most kidnapping the director of Bloodsport is resolved in a few half-assed keystrokes. Even worse, with the advent of smartphones, you can be anywhere on the planet and be proven instantly wrong by total strangers. As an undergraduate, I cringed every time one of my professors expressed any type of doubt about a factual statement she had made, because it was guaranteed that within 15 seconds she would be corrected by a student with a laptop and a penchant for smug overachievement.

2. The Unappreciated Joy of Getting Lost

First, it was MapQuest. Then, Garmen and TomTom. Now, in the latest model Hondas you can simply yell “CHICKEN IN MY MOUTH NOW!!!!!” and a giant neon arrow hovering above your car will direct you to the nearest KFC drive-thru.

It used to be that getting lost going places was fairly common, and occasionally fairly fun. Some of my favorite memories involve trips into the city where I had no idea where I was going or how I was going to get there. Granted, sometimes this resulted in two suburban Jews nervously filling up at a Chevron in Compton, but sometimes it also resulted in finding an awesome Pho restaurant or a sweet used bookstore in the middle of nowhere. Moreover, not having an electronic navigator at your beck and call forced you to learn how to get from one place to the next by a combination of memory and directional instinct. The internet has completely destroyed the need for that skill set, even for those who once possessed it. I don’t leave the bedroom if my iPhone is charging for fear that I’ll take a wrong turn and wind up in New Hampshire on my way to the bathroom.

3. The Unappreciated Joy of Trying Something Completely New

Just once, I’d like a Yelp review to say this: “Part of the thrill of trying this taco truck is the vague but nevertheless palpable threat of diarrhea. Just deal with it, people.” Sometimes a lack of information can be liberating, and choosing a new place to eat simply by aesthetics or menu or location was a joy in and of itself, a cheap gamble that could produce amazing results.

In the pre-Yelp era, you’d give that tiny mom n’ pop Thai place a try simply because it was the only source of 99 cent pad thai in a five mile radius. But now, because foodlover743 says that “the curry was bland, and the satay as underwhelming as the service,” that mom n’ pop Thai place will close within six months and its owners will have to move back to Chiapas. Shame on you.

4. The Unappreciative Joy of Breaking Up Discreetly:

Science has proven that the soul-crushing emotional trauma of a break-up can only be mitigated by the following: 1) an empathetic best friend; 2) time/distance; and 3) gin. Furthermore our brains have yet to catch up with the speed at which our change of status can be acknowledged on Facebook. So a comment on your newly single condition from that kid that sat on the other side of the room in driver’s ed will not make you feel better, no matter how sincerely and well-intentioned his “that sucks man” or “total bummer – can you help me out with some cattle for Farmville?” may be. Whereas sleeping with your ex’s sibling(s) used to constitute the definitive sign that you had gotten over him or her, now editing your Facebook profile is sadly just as mandatory a step to your own personal sense of closure.

5. The Unappreciated Joy of Painfully Slow Communication:

Why is Mad Men so popular? Yes, its brilliantly written and acted. Yes, baby boomers are desperate to watch anything that further confirms the 1960s as the single most important decade of the last 3000 years. But the real reason we’re all so captivated by Don Draper is the incomprehensible sight of a white-collar professional who doesn’t have to spend his commute firing off 70 clarifying emails about dental benefits on his Blackberry Torch. The pace of Don Draper’s life – free of Outlook reminders and iCals and email signatures with emoticons – is so pornographically slow that he’s morally obligated to fill it with infidelity and scotch. A 21st century Don Draper is simply a temporal impossibility.

Viewers are hypnotized not by nostalgia, but by the retrospective nirvana of working somewhere where you would never have to BCC anyone on anything, where the simplest tasks would take months instead of days, where you couldn’t spend your entire working day watching reruns of Manimal on Hulu. Well maybe not that last part.