Sinister Addiction (originally published February 2006)

From our primeval ancestors’ first ruminative munching on cacao leaves to the latest cocktails of sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll, people have for millennia been subject to an ever-expanding set of psychological and chemical addictions. In fact, the range of addictions on campus is almost as diverse as the student body itself. There are the usual suspects of caffeine, Adderall, and Dance Dance “My-Goodness-You-Look-Ridiculous” Revolution (a sad truth that makes fiction look like a suburban nine-to-fiver who drives a minivan to pick the kids up from soccer practice every afternoon).

Yet one source of addiction seems to be shared by the overwhelming majority of the student body. We indulge it automatically every 5-10 minutes. Regardless of whether there’s anything else we really ought to be doing, feeding this addiction comes first. In fact, I’ve done it about six times since starting this column.

I am, of course, talking about addiction to email.

It first occurred to me that I was heavily addicted to checking my email during my second year of college, when I mysteriously collapsed in the library and had to be given an adrenaline shot as I started foaming at the mouth. Although the collapse itself was actually triggered when I accidentally ate some peanuts (and not, as might understandably be supposed, for lack of having checked my email within half-an-hour) as I tried to piece together the episode afterwards, I realized that I had indeed clicked back to webmail every time I finished a sentence in my paper.
Casual observation reveals that such email obsession pervades campuses and workplaces across the country. My friends used to complain constantly about getting pounding headaches when an internet kiosk is not in sight, and it’s common knowledge that writing a college paper simply isn’t possible without a handy internet window at the ready.

Nor is the scope of this mass-addiction confined to mere email checking. Email just happens to be the most common manifestation of a far more insidious infatuation with cyberspace in general. Stroll around any floor of the library, casually glance at what people are doing on their computers, and you will find that not more than one in twenty will actually be accomplishing anything. The rest will be playing online poker, watching clips from the previous night’s Daily Show, or reading about utterly useless crap, like ducks with 17-inch penises (for the shamelessly curious: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2001/10/1023_corkscrewduck.html)

And it’s not just us students who live life wandering from screen to screen in a junkie trance. This need to incessantly suckle at the great Cyber Teat afflicts all of society. Some gadget featuring a new method of connecting to i-land gets released daily: cell phones that do email and check stock quotes, wi-fi implants for your eyes that enable you to pull down a browser window every time you blink. People are obsessed with being connected and plugged in 24-7.
As I pondered this mass migration to the farthest shores of the internet, I began to wonder at its source, and came to an immediately obvious conclusion. This flocking to cyberspace is not a rush towards something so much as it is an escape from something: a flight from reality.

Let’s face it: ever since Adam said to Eve, “Damn, that’s a tasty apple!” and subsequently got ejected from Chateau God to scratch at the dusty ground, things have gone downhill. Reality is harsh: the real world is where catastrophe and war cuddle up to create havoc-wreaking bastard children. Confronted with a world like this, it’s hardly surprising that the moment an alternate reality presents itself in the form of the internet, everyone’s going to crowd in. Cyberspace is vast, soothing, and offers an almost cosmic global connection unavailable anywhere else. Think how amazingly nice it is to pause while grinding out a report or running some numbers, check your email, and see a shiny new little personal-message icon. It’s like getting a present!…even if it does just turn out to be from spamson@hotmail.com and they’re trying to sell you Viagra alternatives (Spamson, if you’re reading this, for the last time I don’t want any of your damn MiraRect).

Philosophers and religious leaders from Plato to the Buddha have for millennia contemplated the illusory nature of the material world we inhabit, positing that we live behind an impenetrable veil barring us from true reality. I’m too busy bouncing between this and Olympic coverage at ESPN.com to think about it very hard, but there seems to be a strange irony in the fact that we are now, as a society, creating an illusion to supplant an illusion, adding a new layer to the curtain. To reference one of those “in” philosophers from Sosc, the world of the internet provides a beautiful, ordered, Apollonian illusion to mask the horrors of Dionysian reality. Can it be the reality we know has grown so horrible that we’re gradually substituting the world of cyberspace for it? For in some ways, cyberspace has become at least as real as the material world. Stories keep popping up about people in online mega-games who pay thousands of very real dollars for characters or in-game real estate. Frequently, the facelessness of AIM or email leads people to express themselves more honestly or openly.

Even our leaders are not immune to this flight from reality. Scientists studying climate change at NASA have accused the Bush administration of suppressing their results and forced them to keep quiet about unpleasant or distressing findings that might rock the boat. And questions continue to arise regarding the possible doctoring of pre-war intelligence to help manipulate public support for a war effort. From our nation’s leaders to students slaving away in the Reg’s all-night study space, reality does not get confronted and fixed when it sucks. Rather, we turn, flee, and take refuge in a constructed, soothing realm that substitutes illusion for truth.

Which is fine by me. As long as I’ve got my email, I’ll eat up any Benevolent Big Brotherly Lie that comes my way.