Arguing on the Internet...

is like running in the Special Olympics -- isn't that what they say? (Even if you win, you're still retarded, is how the joke goes if you haven't heard it.)

I have wasted the better part of the day arguing on the Craigslist arts forum, with a person of questionable integrity. I don't know if "waste" is the right word, though -- I mean, it was fairly intellectually stimulating and fun, but there are FAR better uses of my time.

I have a tendency, from time to time, to get addicted to these stupid things. I think it's because I crave some sort of intellectual exchange, although that's rarely what's provided. It does provide a certain amount of stimulation, a little bit of adrenaline....but does it have inherent value?

What worries me is that so much verbiage is spilled on the internet, rather than in any sort of quantifiable format. What will future historians look at? Instead of written correspondence, people use email. Instead of physical diaries, people use blogs such as this one. Is there any one entity that is keeping a catalogue, a record, of these times? Will all our degradable, flawed media stand the test of time?

But even more -- the quickly fired-off angry post, the flippant email -- how does it represent us as a people? No longer do you have the valuable moments it takes to address the envelope & hunt down a stamp to let your better judgment come into play. Now, as quickly as you hit send, it's in the world, complete with all of your slips of the tongue and angry moments.

Email is hard to take back. Posting on an internet forum, even more so.

Not that I have any regrets. Well, unless all of my writing is lost one day because it's all on the internet.