There is some dark part of me that wanders the Internet looking for things to get mad at. This is not good for my spirit. But I am clearly not alone in this. Much of the Internet is obviously constructed along these very lines; a series of rich opportunities to become enraged, disapproving, disappointed, frustrated, and angry.
Why is the Internet like this?
I don’t know, but it infuriates me!!!
Oh. You were hoping for the non joke answer?
Me too.
Fortunately this inducement to rage is not all of the Internet. There is also the part of the Internet designed to sell you stuff. And sometimes, if one is very careful, and a little bit lucky, one can even find the part of the Internet designed to inform or entertain you. That part’s pretty neat. But why can’t there be more of that! It just makes me so…
No, I think that joke’s all used up.
Lately I have been trying to use rage as a kind of barometer for my time on the Internet, the canary in the coal mine of sorts. Before I look at or watch something, an article, a site, a thread, a video, I might do a little check: “Am I likely to be able to watch this without becoming furious?” But also then, when I’m reading or watching something, I am trying to take my getting furious as a measure of the very quality of what I’m consuming. If I’m watching or reading something that makes me furious, even if that seems righteous and just, even if that makes perfect sense in accordance with the content, maybe that content just… isn’t… very… good.
I read a large amount, both in books and online. And I have come to watch quite a bit of YouTube videos. Some of all that is in Politics, and concerns injustice, the terrible ways the world works, and the needless suffering that is caused to so many for such small and horrible reasons. But I have found in the best of those videos and books, the ones that speak most clearly and honestly, the ones whose understanding is rich and full, no matter how dark and bitter and sad the subject is, I do not become enraged.
Rather,
I am enlightened.
Relevant Life is a Fountain Pages for further exploration: