THE MEANDERWALKER

First and foremost, Kurt Vonnegut passed away last night. It always feels strange when someone so iconic and so influencial to so many generations, dies. It reminds us how even these seemingly infallibles, whose words we take as truth and who represent an entire movement in counterculture in and of themselves, are in fact people. He spent his entire life searching for a purpose as to why we’re here and what we’re supposed to do and how we’re all connected, and it’s likely he didn’t find the answer before his own time expired. Or maybe he did. Either way, while it’s devastating, it’s also comforting to know that he will undoubtedly continue to speak to many generations to come. The New York Times has a nice write-up about him today.

So, in light of questioning connections between people, I read a lot about the internet and about social networking and about how it is all becoming more integrated into popular culture and people’s daily lives — By the way, something feels weird about reading about the internet so much on the internet and writing about it on the internet, but I mean, whatever.

Recently They‘ve been talking about imposing an official “code of conduct” for the blogosphere, and having similar standards and expectations of traditional Journalism imposed on blogs. That way, your average ‘net reader can tell who’s a credible source of Truth and who’s a jackasss with a blogger account stealing their next-door-neighbour’s wireless connection. That seems well and good and all, idealistic even — and if you know me, you know I’m all for idealism — but I think I agree more with the pessimists on this one. Because, like I said in some other junk I posted, it’s not about making and imposing real-life rules on the internet, it’s about dealing with something new and influential in our culture.

“Civility is all about self-restraint. It’s not about being told by someone else to say “no,” but finding the inner resolve to say it to yourself. Call it self-discipline. Call it having a little class. Whatever name you give it, it’s almost completely absent from modern society.”

And people are people. Some people are jackasses with a blogger account stealing their next-door-neighbour’s wireless connection, and some people take their blog-oriented journalism and their moral obligations to their audience very seriously.

“Unfortunately, you can’t just pass a bunch of rules to make incivility go away. Someone who has been getting his way since he was 2 and has grown up into a self-involved, bombastic narcissist isn’t going to have a come-to-Jesus moment just because he’s offended somebody’s sense of etiquette. You can put earrings on a hog but it’s still a hog, y’know?”

Self-involved, bombastic narcissists with no sense of civility will always ruin things for everyone else. But I think it’s about time that people stopped thinking that the internet is so weird and terrible, and also stop thinking that it’s the same as other stuff that’s been around for a long time.

Look, Yahoo is telling us that even “regular people” are using some web-saavy skills to check people out and make less-risky decisions in their dating lives. It’s easy and helpful to google the people you know, and everyone does it; but still, everyone is all ashamed that they, too, can be a lurker so easily.

‘The details people find also can provide a few talking points to get past the initial awkwardness of a first date — though not everyone likes to admit that they’ve done their research. “It seems like in contemporary dating, it’s this elaborate dance between two people who already know a lot of what their date is talking about, but they can’t admit it”…’

Tell me about it! But it’s human connection, in binary form, and another way to find connections with people who you wouldn’t normally find connections with. Yeah, it’s different, and different is scary. But, I mean, how much more mainstream and “out there” can the internet get? Even FOX is buying in — setting up an integrated murder mystery involving their cable programming with internet clues and in-depth character profiles — I think it’s great… I probably won’t watch it and definitely won’t participate, but I still think it’s great.

And personally, no matter what, I still think that walking home by myself at night is a thousand times more scary than finding a new friend on MySpace or posting a little bit of personal info on my blog.

And that’s “real life.”

PS- look at this site from Miranda July, and buy her book when it comes out in May. She’s a genuis.