Adventures in solitude

I'm a luddite. I don't like technology. Or, more specifically, I don't like the way people use it. I deleted my Facebook and twitter accounts because I had to get away from social media. I hated the culture of 'I share therefore I am.' If a girl has a bad day in the forest and she doesn't tweet about it, did it really happen? We have become our own paparazzi. We've turned our private lives into public property. Facebook markets itself as a service, but in reality: we are the product.Call me old fashioned, but I like to keep to myself. I like to process my experiences at my own pace. I want to have some adventures - in solitude.

My life on the internet was most fulfilling when I was sixteen years old, and my friends and I kept long-form blogs for our own entertainment. There was a spirit of self-reflection in every thing we wrote, and with each entry we came closer to establishing a sense of identity, of who we were and what we believed in. It almost feels like we've regressed since then. New media has trained us to only share thoughts that can be contained in 140 characters. The internet has become like a crowded dinner table where everybody is talking and nobody is listening. When I removed myself from Facebook I gave up my seat at the table. I walked outside and stared at the world. I want to use this long-form blog to find my real voice again.