Shout out to Sean for the inspiration behind this. He had a little rant on Twitter a few days ago talking about how the internet has practically changed our ways of thinking and how our lives are essentially RIGHT THERE for everyone to look at. Here’s what he said:

“ Have you taken into consideration how coincidental our technological boom has grown in the past 10 years? Even sites like FB? Twitter? Though we had the option to opt in or out of it, it was made “cool” or even necessary, for business to make sure you’re on social networking. See the forest for the trees. Social networking is compiling (what will be) an indexed dossier of your life. Really think about it though. 80’s babies have their adult lives online. 90’s babies have their teen years and up online. 2000’s babies? Their WHOLE LIVES from birth… My niece & nephew don’t even really know what the internet is yet, but their pictures are online, their accomplishments & failures. All of their parents inadvertently subject their children to the ‘database’ & plug them into the ‘Matrix’ without even realizing it. They have no option. By the time the kids born in 00’s+ are 20 years old, they will be able to track their whole lives from birth, through the internet… I can’t help but feel that the powers that be…have somehow plotted this all along, from the inception of the internet. It’s then marketed to us as “cool”, or necessary in order to have a name on an international scale, or so that your identity isn’t stolen. All of the information you willingly subject online, is housed on server farms, and just because you click “delete” doesn’t mean it’s gone. I have two 2 terabyte hard drives…I’ve easily stored the last 10 years of my life on…Can you imagine what GOOGLE or FACEBOOK has on you? Somewhere down the line, say in 2050, they will look back on the internet as the greatest thing ever created… and the most evil… I just find it too coincidental that as a society we now have willfully subjected our lives to being indexed,right around the year 2000 mark. Who needs genealogists …when you have the internet? You’ll soon be able to trace family trees, right down to that ancestor’s THOUGHTS, which is all kinds of bad to begin with. Our children’s children, seeing our thoughts circa 2011/12 were “You a stupid hoe, You a, You a…”

I don’t even remember how it finished, but it was followed by a bunch of responses and whatnot, but you got the point of what he was trying to say – what happened to society? I know times always change, but since 2003-2004, we’ve been able to share essentially EVERYTHING about us online for other people to see, hear, discuss, and interact, pretty much without having to meet anyone face to face. The thought of it at the time was “oh, I don’t want anyone just knowing my business like that,” well look what happened: you saw other people doing it, you got curious, and like a Hoover vacuum, you got sucked into the system, but unlike the cleaning device, there’s really no exit. As Sean stated, you can hit delete, but that’s only a temporary settlement. The times have changed for better and for worse; the way we speak to each other changes, but our thirst for more information and finding out anything and everything about whatever, has grown.

Facebook was the biggest game changer since the creation of the Internet (yes, bigger than Google) because who would have thought one site can bring the world together without having to leave the country? Remember Pen Pals? When you actually had to write to some stranger from the other side of the globe somewhere, and you didn’t know what they looked like. You didn’t know their backgrounds, all you had was a name, a piece of paper, and a pen. Fast forward 15 years, and bring in Facebook. I can go on to someone’s page who lives in Germany, I can look through their photos, videos, see who their friends with, what school they went to – you see where I’m going with this? There are no secrets over the internet anymore. Even if your page is “locked” or “private,” that really means nothing. At all. You’re still in the system one way or the other and people can see everything you post (if you allow them to). We want people to look at our pictures and ‘like’ them, we want people to give their opinions on what we’re talking about; We. Want. Attention. That’s the sole purpose of social networking, and the internet has given us that. The days when you needed a phone book to find a number to a local business, that music video you love that you missed on BET, that song that was stuck in your head but didn’t know the name of it; all of those examples are diminished. The internet has simplified a lot of things that were deemed difficult for us, and we look back like “damn, it was only a few years ago that this happened.”

“Life moves fast, if you don’t stop to catch it, you can miss it” – Ferris Bueller

That’s My Word & It STiXX