The internet is a cruel, cruel media. Unlike TV and radio where a moment on-air is just that -on-air and fleeting, a post could possibly be there forever, with the potential to be seen by people (or robots/aliens/whateverlifeformtheremaybe) eons later. It's like leaving permanent handprints/footprints/buttprints/fingerprints/whateverprints in an immensely huge canvass for everyone to see.
Humiliating videos go viral on YouTube. Typographically erroneous and misleading tweets get re-tweeted.
Justin Beiber trends. Innocent and well-meaning posts are read and re-read until we find something in it to criticize. It's like giving your present self a bite off a golden apple or a serving of ambrosia. When you later morph into someone else as you grow older, that immortal piece of you remains existent and unaltered. It basically becomes a different person posing as you, someone you can't disown because it IS you -from the past.
How much of "past me" is in the web, I do not know. I might be all over the place, hiding along with all the other junk and past versions of other people. Least I can do is control whatever damage that past me could possibly do by deleting some of it. I mean, that's the reason why only a few posts are left now. hoho
I'm not in tune with the idea of leaving a manipulable me -a text that can be read in whatever way the reader would want it; a text that may seem physically or theoretically unalterable as courtesy to creator but nonetheless ascribed with different, and even conflicting, meanings. What and how much of me I would want to leave, I do not know.
Let's call this the ghost of netizen past. There is a chance of it haunting the ever-changing real-world person. Nonetheless, whatever fear of such chances are overridden by the need to express and to be. So I resolve to choose which ghosts I can afford to let loose. And I leave one now.
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| Since there's the word "ghost," here's for an eerie Christmas! |
