The Smiley Smile Message Board

Just curious about the folks here - what does it entail?

I'm getting a bit concerned about how much time I just spend on the internet and how much it seems to infect my thinking? Is this the future? I spent the weekend away and didn't look at a computer (barely looked at twitter on my phone, which for me is straight up heresy) and it became weird just how after a little while I got some perspective on getting drunk and fronting in politics threads or discussing the minutaie of BB's etc.

Me & Fishmonk hit upon this in one of those politics threads, but I'm kinda interested in the reality/digital thing that maybe is the present age? I don't have much of an online 'presence' per se, certainly not as much as I used to (no more 4chan, reddit kinda passed me by, no tumblr, etc), but it was kinda weird thinking how it gets so easy to think that it's 'life'. A friend of mine is of the belief that the internet is all credible, tangible community and I think that's just insane, because if we were all chilling out in the same room, our jokes would go over, I wouldn't be the only one getting drunk, and we would just not talk to each other that way. Or is judging the quality of our discourse here on the standards of 'real' conversation missing the point?

IDK, just wondering what you all think. Maybe I'll take a sabbatical from the net.

About a year and a half ago (maybe two years), I made a conscious decision to stay off of the internet for one entire week. It was irritable the first few days: the smallest thought of facebook and I was lost in an imaginary world thinking about what my friends were posting about (it sounds stupid, but I'm just being honest). However, after the first few days I began to think with such clarity. Problems in my life that I couldn't solve before, now had the most simple solutions. And, like you, I gained some perspective on how trivial the internet is.

I came to the conclusion that the chaos of the internet clouds our thinking....and when we let go of the internet for a long period of time, that cloud evaporates and you have so much more room to think. Though, I am basing this conclusion solely on my own experience...it may be different for everybody.

Obviously, the pull of the internet was too great for me, and since I've been back on I haven't soberly experienced that clarity of thinking again. Who knows, this conversation here may trigger me to try that one week internet fast again. It was a very eye opening experience.

Junk all of it, delete your facebook, your twitter, your tumblr, all of it. It's all garbage, and I've been way happier since I've stopped using social media.

This is probably very good advice....

I think a lot of us have jobs where we're parked in front of a computer and with lots of down time...... Something of a dangerous position.