How The Internet Skews Reality

If you are reading this you are probably familiar with a thing called “the Internet.” If your assistant printed my article off for you, or possibly read all of it verbally whilst a second and even more attractive assistant transcribed it by hand, then handed you that paper personally, you should know that the “the Internet” is a series of tubes located somewhere in Nevada or Utah. It is where the world stores its pornography.

While the Internet started explicitly to cater to lurid adult tastes, some spin-off technologies have resulted as well. These are: e-mail, Wikipedia, and cyber stalking (pronounced “Facebook.”) You should also know that, for obscure neurological reasons, people react entirely different to things online than they do in person.

Here’s an example: Every seventy-two hours iTunes or Adobe Reader hires a new lawyer and so has to issue new electronic contracts to all six billion people on Earth. I have not, even once, bothered to read a single one of these contracts. For all I know I have deeded Mark Zuckerburg my internal organs, and I will one day wake up in a bathtub full of ice, sans kidneys.

In real life if an attorney handed me a six-page legal dossier there is no way I’d skip to the bottom and sign it. In real life I would say “hmm” and “mmmf?” and put on bifocals and skim the entire document (as if I knew what the hell any of the Latin mumbo jumbo meant) before I signed it.

Another example of the Internet skewing reality is e-mail and self-censorship. Normally if you wanted to tell someone to their face that they’re “a flaming dick wagon” you would exercise a degree of self-restraint. Perhaps you would merely say “dick wagon,” omitting “flaming,” to soften the blow. You might even rephrase it, or question if “flaming dick wagon” is a proper response to when my friend Gerald won’t loan me money, even though Gerald is loaded and I would totally loan him the money if I had it, which I don’t.

Anyway, my point is, your censorship mechanism will engage in conversation, but you only activate that brain function conversationally. It doesn’t automatically happen with e-mail. If you look at the below phrenological diagram, you can clearly see that the human brain’s censorship mechanism is located in the Right Ventricle, which is activated by conversation but not by pixels:

This explains why your co-workers will sometimes fire off snarky messages, but will never be mean to your face, particularly when you wear your holster to work like me. They do not realize that they must be extra careful about heated e-missives, as everyone is less polite online than in real life.

One way to get around this neurological blindspot is to change your e-mail settings. Gmail Labs has a function to delay all e-mail by thirty seconds, during which time you can retract it. Certain browsers allow a “send later” option. If you have a pattern of writing infuriated screeds, you might look into this technology. Set your e-mails to only deliver ten minutes after you hit “send.”

In that intervening ten minutes why not enjoy a beer? A nice relaxing brewsky might be just the thing to sate your thirst and put you in a good state of mind. To be extra, extra relaxed, have a beer after every e-mail you send. If you’re worried that the booze might impair your judgment, just send it via “blind carbon copy,” which is a neato setting where the recipient can’t see what you sent them. Just like when I “send” my friend Gerald “gifts” into the air vents at his house, where they “breed.”