Emotional Overreactions and the Interwebs
Earlier this week I was on YouTube watching videos of Jensen Ackles singing (hush, I’m not obsessed, I don’t even know his home address yet).
But, I noted a common reaction among fans in the comments. Something like, “OMG so beautiful-crying,” or “OMG bawling my eyes out,” and I thought to myself, That’s a bit of an overreaction. I mean he’s talented. He’s attractive. The songs were pretty. But bawling? Seemed extreme. I noticed other YouTube videos of con panels had similar comments. I chalked it up to melodramatic fandom teens and went about my business. Then, I began noticing it on Facebook, amongst my thirty-something + friends and family. Especially on cute cat videos, and those cheesy memes that say things like, Doubt kills more dreams than failure ever will.
Which, as an aside, I love a wise thought, but when I read stuff like that, I always think, What if the person reading this is a sociopath planning their first crime? Some dreams really shouldn’t be realized just because we have them. Like the one where I eat an entire chocolate cake and then get freaky with Ryan Gosling. The reality of that would be much different than my fevered imaginings. Mostly because I’ve got The diabeetus and I’d drop dead from cake overdose long before I managed to play tonsil hockey with Mr. Baby Goose.
As always, I digress. I noted that on one of those sappy videos, comments were all, “OMG crying over here, so beautiful,” on what turned out to be an inspirational advertisement for a soft drink company. Or “This is UNBELIEVABLE! The most hilarious thing I’ve ever seen,” and it’s a video of a cat batting at someone through the mail slot. Cute yeah. Worth all-caps and total disbelief? Maybe if you’ve never seen a cat before in your life — and if you have an internet connection, I don’t think that’s possible. The internet is pretty much stitched together by cat videos and porn (and trimmed with creepy fanfic that intersects both).
The whole thing made me think about one of my favorite books from my teen years. Despite my love of romance, my preferred genres as a kid were horror and dystopian fiction. I love angsty, sad, dystopian novels about human hubris. The Giver was one of my favorites. If I’m remembering correctly, the lives of the citizens of Community are ones of bland conformity. Their needs are all met, they’re comfortable, and have no real strife. Because of this, they lack emotional depth. Having never experienced strong emotions of any kind, they use intense words like hate, rage and fury to describe milder emotions like irritation and displeasure.
Shortly after thinking about this, I was eating a lovely meal at a nice restaurant. My husband asked how I liked it and I said, “This food is AMAZING.” I said it in all-caps too. But was it amazing? Not really. I wasn’t astonished. I didn’t wonder at it’s majesty. It was just really tasty chicken shawarma.
It’s interesting to me that most dystopian fiction features monolithic governments who orchestrate the dumbing down and emotional dampening of society, in the name of progress. You know, Big Brother and the like. But the fact is, we are dumbing ourselves down just fine without any help. It’s not even for progress. It’s for brevity and perhaps attention. Online, we all reverted to being thirteen and got stuck there.
I don’t have any answers. I never do. The whole things seemed silly, but worth blathering about melodramatically. Because, OMFG, it’s, like, seriously making me want to bawl my eyes out.
Just an aside, but what did you learn about me today? That I fantasize about cake before I fantasize about Ryan Gosling nude? Or that when I’m not slaving away on my novel, I spend way too much watching YouTube videos of the cast of Supernatural at con panels? Or perhaps you learned that I know more than is healthy about internet porn and creepy fanfic? The speculation could be endless.
