Feelings Had
Last night during a discourse on the state of the Internet — a subject on which I am uniquely qualified to hold forth, being one of those “pioneers” who conveniently disregards all the people who were there before him while simultaneously gazing with derision on anyone who came after, even if it was a matter of months — I tried without success to identify the moment at which the whole thing switched over from being an elective medium to a compulsory one, by which I mean where once you could quite plausibly admonish complainants with the maxim, “If you are unhappy with what you’re seeing it is your own fault because of who you follow or where you choose to go,” now there is no safe space in which to take shelter from the onslaught of outrage, hurt feelings, and the unrelenting expression of psychic pain. If you are anywhere on the Internet, anywhere at all, you cannot avoid it. When did that happen? When did we make that transition? Everyone I have asked has different answers, and I suppose we will never settle it definitively. All we can do now is accept it. This is the Internet in which we all live from here on out and there is no good to be had from complaining about it because it will not change. But for the love of God, could you people please stop doing all the things with the feelings about the end of “How I Met Your Mother”? There are some burdens no one should be asked to bear.