|
 I
wish I understood the psychology of exposing oneself on one or more of
the many sites that are now appearing like fertile rabbits on the
Internet. Perhaps it is just my background and an obvious generation
gap.
There are many theories for this new-fangled exposure by the young,
or, I assume, the mostly young. Some of these have to do with the
loneliness youth increasingly feels in our soulless and over-populated
world. Apparently, it is easy for a teenager normally struggling for
an identity to feel isolated and lost among an increasingly larger
mass of equally lost youth. Here I don’t include, but I should, their
equally lost elders. There is a theory that when parents drink at
home, their children will drink outside the home. Anecdotal evidence
points in that direction. Are we seeing something about kids and
parental relationships? If relationships at home are wanting, even
missing, because of the press of everyday life, children obviously
suffer from a lack of intimacy. Into the void there are new sites on
the Internet that cater to intimate diaries that formerly people wrote
in late at night and then locked away from prying and curious eyes.
Now they are on the Internet for all to see. I find this kind of
public exposure baffling.
Appealing to the emptiness of life among the young, along come clever
programmers, many who are also recently out of their teen years. They
have the ability to use the latest technological tools at their
disposal, and the creativity to invent new ones, that offer a way out
of the isolation our youth keenly feel. Kids in society see the
various roads that lead to on-line communities and away from their
feeling of isolation. The young, and probably not so young, decide to
join the cyber world instead of being part of society. In fact, they
dive headlong into the scrimmage on the Internet. They make these
unreal worlds a part of their personal space. They remain cut off from
the world because they are dealing in false reality, not “the real
thing.” Appearing on any on-line site provides a buffer to true
connection. That distance may only be a few feet or as much as a
thousand miles. Many of the young are unable to navigate the
complexities of every life passage, including romance, success and
failure, and all life’s complexities. Intimate thoughts become digital
and thus emotions are bits and pieces of code instead of anything that
is real and alive. Why does this generation fear talking face to face?
Why does this generation seemingly refuse to look one another in the
eye? That fear of direct connection destroys any sense of modesty. It
is easy to be immodest in cyberspace.
New sites are springing up all the time on the Internet. Some
advertise with pride that they will provide what they call,
“unvarnished reality.” That translates into pictures of death in war,
corpses, anything grisly beyond what we used to call “good taste,” and
sexual content usually found only on pornographic sites. Can snuff
films be far behind? Where does the need for the worst, the ugliest
end? Some of these purveyors of the “new” say they are depicting the
real world for everyone to see. Others intone their right to coddle no
longer our children as they make their precarious climb into another
stage of life. It seems to me to be bottom feeding at best, because
there is nothing worse, or is there.
These sites ignore the minefield of growth children must endure.
Though often painful, most youngsters survive the usual ordeals of
growing up. Some things do not change, among them the road to maturity
and the inner clock that controls most of our meaner social urges, we
hope.
The sites, though, are increasingly obscene, and profane. They often
offer indecent behavior, especially when two-way cameras are available
without monitors, gatekeepers, to say, whoa, do not go there because
you are not as ready as you might think you are for the wider world.
Is the life of the young in the early 21st century so bereft of
personal communication, of touch, and inner meaning, that the only
means of interacting is through cyberspace, distant and impersonal?
Maybe if these children of the impersonal make it to adulthood, we
will have a greater understanding through them of the distance they
have imposed on each other by appearing in small boxes on a computer
screen. Then again, maybe they will not understand more than I do now
or I will then.
There are now so many people who are spending their time viewing these
sites and providing material for them, I wonder if they have time for
anything else. Do they have lives outside cyberspace? Is the world of
futurists now real? In an attempt at the personal, everything on the
Internet becomes impersonal. Will people be able to tell real from
fake? I am starting to think not.
Everyone looks at everyone else’s so-called creative offerings,
whether as the creator of songs, skits, or stories, with the same
uncritical eye. Quality is secondary to public exposure. These
providers are alone and in their loneliness, they seek solace from the
number of hits they get for their usual amateurish presentations. Of
course, we cannot hope for a strong critical approach. It means that
the ability to analyze anything will have such a low standard that no
one will be able to tell good from bad. The lowest common denominator
will rule.
Finally, who has the time to view everything on these sites? Do people
really have that much time on their hands that they spend it looking
at the lives of others, perhaps living through all those other people
they do not know or will ever know? That is the problem. Without
engaging in life and its infinite variety, life as reality, existence
in cyberspace rules now and will continue to do so in the future.
.........................................................................................................................
At NBC News for 35 years, Ron Steinman was bureau chief
in Saigon, Hong Kong and London, was a senior producer on Today and wrote
and produced for Sunday Today. At ABC News Productions, he produced
and wrote documentaries for A&E, TLC, Discovery, Lifetime and the
History Channel. He has a Peabody, a National Headliner award, a
National Press Club award, a International Documentary Festival Gold
Camera Award, two American Women in Radio & Television awards and
has been nominated for five Emmy's. He is a partner in
Douglas/Steinman Productions, whose latest documentary, "Luboml: My
Heart Remembers," aired on PBS' WLIW/21 and the History Channel in
Israel, April 29, 2003. He is the author of, "The Soldiers 'Story",
"Women in Vietnam," and most recently, "Inside Television's First
War: A Saigon Journal," University of Missouri Press, 2002. |
