Dear Friend

Dear Friend,

Why do you sit there, glued to the computer screen? A year ago, you didn't know how to use it or even have an e-mail account. Now you are a willing slave to technology. You don't listen to living, breathing people anymore, you just tell them to e-mail you. You blow off real friends in pursuit of those digital ones.

"Look at this," you tell me. "Did you know about this," you explain. "Have you ever heard of (such a thing)," and I feel like going insane. I want to yell at you, to tell you to make up your mind. That you can't not want me there in physical space with you and then you want me there at the same time. It doesn't work like that! You can't have it both ways! And I want to tell you I'm jaded. That nothing on that contraption will surprise me. That the world technology has given me has been disillusioned, and the only thing new and exciting anymore is actually living. Just living.

So get back to your virtual reality. You probably didn't hear me anyways. You're caught up in this thing, breathing electricity, fed on your inability to keep from it's keys and mouse. You're not you anymore. You're like an addict, unable to deny a craving and unable to stop once you're able to get your fix. You can't stop, can't eat or sleep, your mind gone on things that could be waiting on you in the magical hard drive kingdom. You have to have someone tell you to stop, to keep you from O.D.ing on information.

And you binge, trying to get as much as you can, as fast as you can. As if you were trying to make up for the years you spent in naivety. And when you come back, you seem adrift, lost. Unable to care about the real world. You're cradled in the arms of technology. One day it will bury you alive and pull your plug.

Your Friend,

Mlle Magpie

~2006