Garbage in the Internet Age
The real trash isn’t just what’s cluttering landfills, but what’s filling the Internet void
AFTER THE STREAM OF VIOLENCE in Europe, Egypt, Turkey, Pakistan and earthquakes shaking the lives of people in various parts of the world, I spent hours pondering what I should put on the Internet ‒ my “contribution” to the thoughtfulness of civilisation as it were. Most of the time, I came up empty. Writing platitudes seemed pointless. It’s one thing to deliver it in person, another to put it online in some blog post or tweet, half-expecting to be patted on the back for feeling sad about ongoing tragedies in the world. People who have just suffered apocalyptic loss aren’t interested that you’re having a Facebook reaction to their trauma. They want solutions, and if you can’t provide any, your sadness is really just a show for the Internet world to watch.
I remember how my mum used to scold me for shooting my mouth off when I was a kid. Of course, it was never about anything important, but I grew up with the adage
“if you don’t have anything good to say, then you should keep your big fat mouth shut”. Now I have to switch “big fat mouth shut” to “hands off the keyboard” to make it suitable for the Internet generation. Alas, kids today have the attention span of a spider monkey and the self-restraint of a two-year-old child who has caught sight of candy.
That’s the thing. Our information feeds are chock full of inanities that are Jedwardstandard, attention whores, Buzzfeed listicles that are meaningless dribble and Kanye Wests. And in case you’re wondering, yes, I’m using Kanye as a noun rather than a personal name. It’s to describe modern megalomaniacs who take to social media to add more data dribble to servers. We can no longer easily distinguish information and fact from misshaped opinion, so often are they intertwined. Even news agencies are not free from this form of treachery, as they create listicles about Twitter reactions to this incident and that.
Add the above to others who feel the need to spread vitriol and those who like to do the “name and shame”, and I’m beginning to see how we’re fast becoming one of the least educated generations in the world ever. Even counting our ancestors who foraged for food and hunted and gathered. At least they had to memorise by heart what was edible and what was not, and herbs that could treat illnesses. Google today is the dictionary of the masses, and tabloid blogs are news agencies.
In the past, we knelt at the altar of knowledge, praised intelligence and brilliance and celebrated the inventiveness of great minds. Today, while there are plenty of people out there who are still doing important work that may change the world for better or worse in the future, their voices are drowned out in a sea of meaningless tweets (I count mine among them). The solution? We need garbage disposal units in the Internet.