The Setting

In this post I'll be describing the setting of this controversy. The setting is the internet which should be hard to describe, so buckle your seat belts, kids.

Lee, Mike. "Classic OPTE Project Map of the Internet 2005". 4/28/2009 via Flickr. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0.


 

My chosen controversy takes place in arguably the most popular location in the entire world- the internet. The internet is an amazing place. It has everything- any photo, information, any idea imaginable and yet it has no face. There is no nature, no wind, it's a void full of people who's personas change when they find themselves behind a keyboard. It's full of trolls, self-proclaimed psychiatrists, anonymous experts and people who thought they had stomach cramps but now, thirty seconds later, think they have cancer. If I have a sudden urge to know whether or not Katy Perry has a nose ring, I can find out instantly. If I find myself in a debate with my father as to whether a particular actress was also in another show, we can settle it right then and there. And yet there's no wind there. No trees or sky or people or any particular smell in the air- well there's no air. Only the idea of what air might be like based on the description written by someone who leaves their room occasionally. Only the idea of what a person might be like based on an avatar, a profile picture, or a status update. You can know people, but you can't really know them. You can meet them, but it takes an extra step to actually meet. It's a place of half connections, surface friendships, and deceitful diagnoses. It has no sound, and yet any sound or music you could ever want to hear. It's complicated, but full of twelve year olds who simply know everything. There's nothing quite like the internet.