Come Visit Our Dot Com

Perhaps it is just my Inner Reactionary talking, but some days I find very little that is delightful about the internet, or (as I am inclined to call it) the Infotainment Stupidhighway. At such times I fully empathize with those who eschew the computer. I consider that I was much happier and did a lot less sitting before we allowed one into our house fifteen years ago. This, of course, is before I remember that it would have been impossible for me to have accomplished any of what I have achieved in those fifteen years. As much of a nineteenth-century guy I would like to imagine I am, computers were made for the likes of me. What was I like, pre-internet? I was bitter, and irritable, and subject to outbursts of scurrilous and subversive humor. I was a relentless writer of sarcastic letters to the editor of the local daily, typing my screeds flawlessly on a decades-old manual typewriter. I was jealous of others’ success and happiness. I was terrified of rejection, and of spending a stamp to discover that others might not find me as hilarious as I found myself. I lulled myself with mellow wine brewed from sour grapes. It’s counterintuitive that access to the internet made me a better person. The process took a number of years, but I gradually stopped lashing out and blurting things that were hurtful. Rather than merely jousting with other malcontents who competed for column