an introduction

Hello to the 1,966,514,816 people who use the internet, and a special hello to those 266,224,500 who use teh internetz in North America - you're the ones most likely to be understanding this blog, speaking English and all.

The first thing you need to know is that I love the internet. I've even come to rely on it in my daily life - okay, let's be realistic - I have an iPhone, it's constant interaction with "the network" for me. However, at the same time, I absolutely hate what this constant screen-to-screen interaction has done to us. Having used the internet since 1997, learned HTML in 2001, and started using social networking site in 2003, I'd like to think I have quite enough experience under my belt to call myself a webhead. As such, I have crippling difficulty confronting anyone, and my introverted nature doesn't make things any better. Facebook is simply an enabling tool for non-confrontational behavior, but not just for me - friends and acquaintances have admitted to its detrimental effects on their interpersonal interaction.

Thus: this project.

It's not an exploration of breaking out of my shell and deleting my facebook account and going up to random strangers to talk about things that you might talk to a random stranger about. Nor is this going to be a confessional series of posts whining about how I wish I could talk to boy X or girl Y about my issues with professor Z... Okay, I didn't like my class with professor Z, but that's another story. I think Russian's just not my thing.

What this is is a commitment to developing the way I look at things and people in the public sphere. I know what you're thinking - I should read John Berger's Ways of Seeing. It's on my reading list, so expect a nice lengthy response to that sucker. In any case, personal presence and non-verbal communication have always fascinated me, especially in the light of the recent demise on almost all face-to-face interaction. I couldn't write anything about anything if I didn't talk about how it looked, and I expect a lot of awkward and a lot of short attention spans. This lovely little project offers me an outlet to tell about anonymous interactions I observe, and perhaps even a fashion disaster or two.

Speaking of fashion disasters, my roommate is wearing a snuggie. Time to fix this situation.

quick source citing 'cause I don't really like plagiarism:

http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm for internet stats