I'm bored in seattle tonight, so I starting poking around on myspace. I have an account there, though I really haven't gotten into the rampant friend collection that seems really neccesary. After about ten minutes of flashing pages and reading up on Charlie's sister's thoughts on marijuana, I got creeped out. Myspace constantly creeps me out. People posting comments about comments about in-jokes of the time somebody got drunk and flashed a gansta sign to somebody else. ech.
so I shlepped over to the almost-recently-deceased friendster, where almost nothing has happened in years, and thought about the testimonials that I would write if I wasn't such a coward:
"Jack is a really nice guy if you can get past his grating awfulness."
"Jenny sure knows a lot of people. I think it's her business.'
It's a good thing I work for a company doing social networking.
Bitterness and loathing reign supreme over the puget sound.
===
I remember living in a city now. It's taken a bit of adjustment after a year or two living with two people in the country. The benefits are obvious - the movie theatre on the corner that plays all the darling little indie films, the many places to get vietnamese food of varying qualities and styles. The sandwich place down the street that serves a roast leg-of-lamb sandwich for eight dollars.
And then there's all these fucking people.
The human buffet isn't actually all that bad, I guess. My problem is that I'm constantly trying to pretend I'm not interested in what they're doing. The crazy woman cursing the sidewalk, yelling at a scrap of paper?. Am I interested? Is the dude in the parking lot just relieving himself or is he after something different? Don't I want to know? Aren't I curious? Of course I'm curious. Any of these events in the country could start a minor brush fire of interest. Flashlights would be taken down from foyer shelves. Boots would be strapped on. The neighbors would know. But here, in the city? Yawn. Move along. The instinct to look away, to feign non-interest, is at least partially self-defense. Even if you want to know what those two down on the corner are selling, you don't really want to see it sold. Less knowledge of the crime being commited around you equals less chance of getting unwillingly involved.
Unfortunately, it jades you rather quickly, and soon most human interaction is just - look away, nothing to see here folks.
Or at least that's my experience.
