There was an ad that ran during the 90s that really creeped me out. It was from AT&T or some other remnant of the Bell Telephone monopoly, and it proclaimed that WE’RE ALL CONNECTED. I’ve rarely felt connected to individual people, much less all people, so the mental image the ad produced—millions of cables and signals tethering and binding us to each other—was alarming. I paid little mind to the Internet. I was a cabdriver and painter who was suspicious of photography, so what good could anything on a computer screen do for me?
The most important reason for me to log on to the Internet every day was to publicize my work, but I also felt a compulsion to keep up with what everyone in my online circle was doing. This became a kind of job in itself, and an often demoralizing one. I couldn’t help but envy those with more “friends,” or wonder whether my “friends” reciprocated my interest, admiration, or love. The quest to raise my profile or status became a preoccupation. There was no way to avoid those fluctuating numbers next to my avatar.
A week later I walked into a Verizon store and traded in my iPhone 6 for a basic flip phone. The guys working there treated this as an act of betrayal—they couldn’t understand why anyone would do such a thing.
