How the Internet ruined my life

I have become a boring person because of Facebook,” I told my friends one night a couple of weeks ago over ice cream. Never mind that I have nearly 600 friends, can chat with pals in countries eight hours ahead and an ocean away, and now have access to photos that would usually take weeks to get my hands on if I had to rely on promises from friends that they’d “burn me a CD.”

Facebook (make that the Internet) has made me a boring person. I don’t read books anymore. I barely go out. I don’t even watch TV — I haven’t even seen a single episode of Gossip Girl. I’d rather spend my days locked up in my room, laptop precariously perched on my lap, while I either view photo albums on social network sites (tedious), watch stupid videos of some bride falling into a pond because of a clumsy best man on Yahoo Video (hilarious) or looking up what women in Moscow and Paris are wearing on the Sartorialist (inspiring). I wasn’t even sure how my friends were able to drag me away from my MacBook that one night for ice cream, when I had already planned to spend it with Scott Schuman and Jared whatever his last name is. (I usually have my mint chocolate fix while trying to figure out if it’s Tina Fey or the real Sarah Palin trying to be irrepressibly “adorable” — yet again — on Saturday Night Live.)

And because of nights spent with my laptop, I’ve developed recurring neck pains, tight shoulders and lower back pains. Creaky noises come out each time I bend my fingers, and I have developed red welts on my thighs from the heat from the laptop singeing them. I’ve resolved to go back to yoga but, so far, all I’ve done is check out class schedules on the Internet.

I nearly didn’t get to send this article on time because I was trying to simultaneously download the soundtrack of Pineapple Express on Torrent and trying to figure out the new Genius feature on iTunes 8. I mean, this Genius is amazing: It lumps together songs of the same genre so that you don’t have to create a playlist anymore. (See, I even digress because of Internet discoveries.)

Even my relationship has suffered. My boyfriend sometimes refuses to come to the house when I tell him that we can just “hang out.” “You’ll just be on Facebook the whole night. Or on the Internet,” he points out in some matter-of-fact manner meant to make me realize that he’s calmly accepted that his girlfriend has turned into a Net zombie. In my defense, I tell him that sometimes, it’s him I Google on the Internet.

I am admittedly an Internet junkie. I have turned vulnerable and impressionable because of it. I am one of those many victims of online shopping who have paid so much because of really great photography. When I finally get my designer bag in the mail, I can’t figure out why it cost only a few hundred dollars. 

And in certain (low) points, the Internet has turned me into a vicious shrew. At one time, I very nearly filed a lawsuit against my DSL provider because my modem was not working for a couple of days. I raised hell, I was stern, I was my most bitingly sarcastic. They finally sent a technician to check the problem and he found out that it was the fax machine plugged into the box all along. Yeah, I had to swallow the poisonous bile that had collected in my mouth and embarrassingly choke out the sweetest of apologies.

I also always make sure that I’m connected each time I’m out of town and condemn a hotel to backwater status if they don’t offer free Wi-Fi or broadband Internet access in their rooms, conveniently forgetting that if you pay $30 for a room, you can’t always expect free Wi-Fi. I’ve come to love traveling to, or even just stopping over in Hong Kong: the whole airport is a Wi-Fi zone; it’s easy to while away time on dlister.com while waiting for your flight.

A colleague once e-mailed me this article written by some chick who lamented how the Internet ruined her chances for a relationship with a very nice guy. She related how she Googled this guy prior to their first date and became so intimidated by all his achievements that she stumbled and mumbled all throughout dinner and generally screwed herself out of a second date by blurting out tidbits that he couldn’t remember telling her.

Though I was alternately laughing and naively thinking I am nowhere near as pathetic as this woman (I did say I was naïve), I was secretly thankful that there was no such thing as Facebook or Multiply or Friendster when my boyfriend and I started dating, just the traditional pass-on-by-mouth gossip route. And we all know that hearsay is a lot more forgivable than firsthand Facebook stalking.

I write this on Halloween Day and friends are asking me my plans for the night. I seriously don’t have any. I missed two parties last night, both of which I had confirmed attendance to on Facebook, because I was so engrossed in downloading ‘80s songs onto my iTunes. (Legitimately, though, I had the most debilitating stiff neck, and we all know how I got that one.) When “I’ll just stay home” begins to become synonymous with “I’ll just spend the night uploading pictures to a new photo album,” then you know you’ve become a very boring person indeed.

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E-mail comments to ana_kalaw@pldtdsl.net.