What it has done is confound me on occasion. Examples, you say? You want examples? Fine.
First of all, Barack Obama won't be my friend. He seems like a nice enough guy; I interviewed him once for a news story and he was about as easygoing as a high-powered political dude could be.
Yet whenever I try to befriend him on MySpace, I am shunned. Perhaps it's my book, full of mayhem and violence that a presidential candidate could never tacitly endorse. Or maybe it's because there's a picture of me sitting in a bar--another scene that rising political stars aren't known to frequent. Hell, maybe it's some of my other friends, like the Tossers or Flogging Molly; I admit they're a little bit rough around the edges.
The Tossers like beer. So do I. Does Barack Obama?
In any event, my Internet friendship is being spurned. And it hurts. It hurts in ways that Al Gore never dreamed of.
Then there's the whole question of anonymous blog commenters. I know I get off pretty easy in this regard, in that my work has thus far not incited anyone to outright verbal nastiness. But the whole anonymity thing makes communication difficult. For instance, a former classmate of mine commented on a post a couple of days ago... yet I have no way of contacting that person, because Blogger protects his or her identity like a Swiss bank guard. During the book give-away contest, several entrants got a doughnut--the kind indicating "zero," not the tasty it's-not-just-for-breakfast treat--because there was no way to contact them.
And so, my friends, I think it is clear that the Internet is doing everything in its high-speed digital power to keep me from living the life I should. Yes, "hatred" might not be the right word. But it's tough to think offhand of a similarly short word that means "making things difficult for me." Maybe I could Google that....
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