Connection Established
BY SHELLY BRYANT I FEBRUARY 17, 2009
I have friends without faces. I speak to them all day every day, but I've never heard their voices. Often, I spend more time with them than I spend with my friends in the flesh. And yet, I spend no time with them at all.
My cyborg existence is lived out, for the most part, within this single room. The four blank walls stare at me as I stare at my screen. In this tiny space I live my life. And the time spent here spans the globe. Trapped in this cell, I am unbound.
Multiple windows are always open on my single screen. In the space of 17 inches, I hold congress with Africa, Asia, and Europe—and with the boy down the street (though he claims to be in Uruguay). It is a borderless universe, where we all stay together, worlds apart, in an LCD existence.
I can chat it up with the best of them. In fact—not to brag or anything, but—I do. I chat like a champ. I can go on hour after hour after hour without tiring. And without ever opening my mouth.
I'm always a real hit with the ladies....and the men. The old and the young. The short and the tall. The fat and the thin. The rich and the poor. The beautiful and the ugly. It doesn't matter, really—how would I know the difference? And how would they? We don't have faces. It's all the same to me, once I see those lovely words: "Connection Established."
And I'm really against censorship in any form. I'm all for the First Amendment, free speech, and all that kind of stuff. Just try me—if you post a comment at my place suggesting we burn books, take them out of a school library, or something like that, I'll delete it faster than you can blink. I just won't have anyone advocating censorship. Not at my place.
I fight endless battles, but not for home or country. As far as that goes, I'm an extreme pacifist. But I can wage war and throw flames like you wouldn't believe. I fight for causes I know nor care nothing about. I can say the cleverest things, win any argument. I am the flame-master.
I've never in my life licked a stamp. But I send and receive mail every day. It piles up so quickly in my inbox—I might just go postal. But I'm not quite sure what that even means.
Real life happens every second on my screen. I can send and receive moment to moment updates on what is going on in the real world. I can watch wars as they happen. I can witness a murder. I can watch live sex on the screen. I can even perform whatever comes to mind and post myself in the act, if I want. And no one will ever know if it's really me, nor if the words and images are true.
But they look so real. That is what counts. And that is what I want. It's got to be real. More real than the mouse in my hand. I live and move in a world of the hyper-real. And I don't even care if it's all a fiction.
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