Irony and Tigers

After yesterday's post, I was fairly committed to writing something frivolous and entertaining today.

Then a friend posted this essay by Alice Gregory from n+1 on Facebook. Sorry everyone!

I don't agree with all of it, but it really seems to capture the anxiety-ridden frenzy plaguing many 20-somethings today.

Especially as a journalist, I am constantly under pressure to rack up the most Twitter followers, the best optimized blog, the strongest merger of professional and personal life on Facebook. They call it social capital, and I definitely understand its benefits, but it's "exhausting." As Gregory writes:

I have the sensation, as do my friends, that to function as a proficient human, you must both “keep up” with the internet and pursue more serious, analog interests. I blog about real life; I talk about the internet. It’s so exhausting to exist on both registers, especially while holding down a job. It feels like tedious work to be merely conversationally competent. I make myself schedules, breaking down my commute to its most elemental parts and assigning each leg of my journey something different to absorb: podcast, Instapaper article, real novel of real worth, real magazine of dubious worth. I’m pretty tired by the time I get to work at 9 AM.

And one more passage:

The internet’s most ruinous effect on literacy may not be the obliteration of long-format journalism or drops in hardcover sales; it may be the destruction of the belief that books can be talked and written about endlessly. There are fewer official reviews of novels lately, but there are infinitely more pithily captioned links on Facebook, reader-response posts on Tumblr, punny jokes on Twitter. How depressing, to have a book you just read and loved feel so suddenly passé, to feel—almost immediately—as though you no longer have any claim to your own ideas about it.

I realize the irony in the fact that I'm writing about this on the internet, and I read it on the internet, and found it through a social network that the essay lambasts.

And you're probably assuming from the last two blog posts that I am becoming anti-Internet, and will retire to a Walden-style cabin and reject these 21-century distractions. But we both know that won't happen.

Like everything, the internet has its pros and cons. Without Skype or this blog or Facebook, I would certainly feel so much more disconnected thousands of miles away. I love the internet (a strong statement). But that's because it allows me to stay in touch with all of you!

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Okay, that's enough about that. In other news, this article from MSNBC was posted by my cousin Libby and totally makes me feel good about my tiger adopting decision.

I'm looking at my little stuffed tiger and the pictures of the real one in Nepal and hoping she's safe!

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Now for something frivolous and entertaining! If you've made it this far, thanks for sifting through my angst! Hopefully this will put you in a better mood.

It makes me so excited to go to Israel and see Libby (not my cousin but almost my sister), and then to head home for the holidays and see my parents waiting for me at baggage claim!

My dream is to be involved in or be coincidentally around for one of these flash mobs. It will happen someday, I'm sure.

I hope you're having a wonderful week so far!

Love,
Jess