Someone mentioned “the Blogosphere” and it hit home with me when I read this article about the Monekysphere. Maybe it’s because we were all thinking about a couple of posts Damien Mulley posted about people being killed in Burma and also the use of expletives in blog posts.
From the article on the Monkeysphere (which you should read):
They’re all humans and they are all equally dead. But the closer to our Monkeysphere they are, the more it means to us. Just as your death won’t mean anything to the Chinese or, for that matter, hardly anyone else more than 100 feet or so from where you’re sitting right now.
This is why we cry our eyes out at the death of our dog but thousands dead in some other country, yup, sad…now sports….
and again:
Think about this the next time you get really pissed off in traffic, when you start throwing finger gestures and wedging your head out of the window to scream, “LEARN TO ****ING DRIVE, ****ER!!” Try to imagine acting like that in a smaller group. Like if you’re standing in an elevator with two friends and a coworker, and the friend goes to hit a button and accidentally punches the wrong one. Would you lean over, your mouth two inches from her ear, and scream “LEARN TO OPERATE THE ****ING ELEVATOR BUTTONS, ****CAMEL!!”
It’s true. People go crazy on the Internet. You se it on the social networking sites all the time. People becoming Crazy Stalker People, people deleting their profiles and then…re-adding them….then deleting again. (If you assume people on the Internet are crazy, then it all starts to make a little more sense)
The Internet has the possibility of expanding your Monkeysphere outside of your immediate friends and family (this is the way I feel after 15 years on the ‘net). That’s because most of the people you meet on the net are outside of your Monkeysphere. You care about them in the rational way but really…do you know these people? It will take time for you to assimilate these people into your life.
And it has deeper implications when you consider religion:
There’s this concept that God is a person and is our friend. They’re trying to make this nebulous entity part of our Monkeysphere and us, pat of his. His is, of course, massive, but yours would consist of God plus a small section of the congregation. By “sinning” (lying, killing and giving equal rights to Muslims), you’re hurting this “entity” which is in your Monkeysphere.
Do you feel manipulated?
Just testing the comments thingie