A Day Off From the Internet

By Faiqa On July 23, 2008 · 9 Comments

I was listening to Sirius BBC Radio Forum in my car a few days ago, like I do whenever the 80s station is playing Whitesnake, and some Frenchwoman named Cecille was heading that day’s discussion. Truth be told, I’m not sure if she’s really French or not, but she sounded French. And I don’t know [...]

I was listening to Sirius BBC Radio Forum in my car a few days ago, like I do whenever the 80s station is playing Whitesnake, and some Frenchwoman named Cecille was heading that day’s discussion. Truth be told, I’m not sure if she’s really French or not, but she sounded French. And I don’t know why that would be important, but I feel like it should be.

Anyway, Cecille was proposing that the entire world mandate a day off from the Internet once a week. Furthermore, since most world religions approach Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays as obligatory holy days, Cecille thinks that this day off from the Internet should be during the week.

Let me repeat that for dramatic effect: an entire day off from the Internet including e-mail one weekday per week.

Does anyone else think Cecille is kind of an idiot? I will ignore the most obviously idiotic parameters of her argument, such as the fact that this whole topic of discussion is akin to the “how many angels are on the head of a pin” discussion (for the record, I think there are only 3).  I will only briefly intimate that if it were up to Cecille, we would probably all be wearing loincloths, clubbing each over the head for raw meat and not using indoor plumbing.  I will, however, address Cecille’s insistence that her value system be adopted by the entire world.

Miss Parlez-Vous thinks the world should stop using the Internet one weekday per week because she believes that people are not living life because they are too busy surfing the net, hanging out on social networking sites and (gasp) blogging.
Obviously, Frenchy wasn’t talking about me because I live life.  And since it’s 1a.m., I’m not ignoring the important people in my life in order to engage in Internet escapades.  True, the few hours of extra sleep might make me more pleasant first thing in the morning, but I think my grumpiness ultimately provides character building opportunities for my daughter and husband.  Nonetheless, I am a little irritated by Vive La Republique’s complete and total lack of tolerance for people who want to be on the Internet all the time.
Frankly, people who don’t like people should be allowed to avoid people if they want (does anyone else have a Depeche Mode song blaring in their heads right now?). The beauty of the Internet, French Toast, is that antisocial types can connect with people on their own terms whereas without it they might not connect with anybody, at all.
Finally, and this is the most important point of all, we need antisocial geekheads so that we can all feel good about how well adjusted we are.  Why does French Fry want to take that away from us?
 
From the daily archives: Wednesday, July 23, 2008