Here's what I genuinely love about the internet: it elevates the trivial to the phenomenal with brute force. Sometimes there are mixed results. When a bunch of amateur internet sleuths caught the wrong Boston bomber, the internet was Bad. When a bunch of people ganged up to deliver pizza to a two-year-old cancer patient, the internet was Good. But mostly it seems like the social internet is one big real-time repository for mundane existence.
The internet is incredibly intimate
Some people say the internet has eroded the depth of our involvement with other people, and with the world. I sure feel like that sometimes. But that's not true, at least not entirely: some of our experiences are just packaged differently now. We might not know the handful of people surrounding us in our villages as intimately as our ancestors did, but we can see the intimate thoughts of 3,000 people anytime we want by pulling a little glowing rectangle out of our pockets.
Being able to see hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands of people unwittingly having the same thoughts at the same time in plain view is, ironically, something that makes the internet really intimate. Maybe the most intimate thing that people have ever created. Before the internet, a lot of these thoughts would have never left someone's brain and entered into communal existence. The ability to see them now — to see so many of them at once — is a new kind of human awareness. And it's rad.
Today, lots of people watched as their clocks leaped forward an hour thanks to daylight savings time: a time zone system invented in 1883. Here's how people are reacting to it 132 years later:
So did the clock just go from 1:59 to 3:00
— rav (@songsides) March 8, 2015
it's kinda wild how the time went from 1:59 to 3:00 in just one minute
— Paulma Dutchmaster (@p_sosa23) March 8, 2015
Wow it's gonna go right from 1:59 to 3:00 I'm buggin out
— A$AP CA$$ (@cassidy_rudden) March 8, 2015
My phone just went from 1:59 to 3:00 and I stared at it for a long time thinking I was tripping out
— lo (@Laurenhoweyy) March 9, 2014
The fact that it just went from 1:59 to 3:00.... It shouldv went back I gotta work this morning
— ❤.JUicey_COuture.❤ツ (@jazabell_) March 8, 2015
@camshollywood my phone went from 1:59 to 3:00 and I almost had a mini panic attack
— Makayla (@EspinosasFinest) March 8, 2015
Nothing more upsetting than seeing the clock go from 1:59 to 3:00 when you have to get up early
— Bryan Matthieu (@bryan_matthieu) March 8, 2015
Watched the clock change from 1:59 to 3:00 and got so freaked out
— ♡Sarah Long♡ (@slonggggggg1) March 8, 2015
When the clock goes from 1:59 to 3:00 pic.twitter.com/7DMeFEf1fo
— rawad (@rawatermelon) March 8, 2015
HOW DID IT GO FROM 1:59 TO 3:00 HELP
— Kristen Logan (@kristenlogan7) March 8, 2015
It went from 1:59 to 3:00 my life is so messed up now it seems like i stayed up ALL NIGHT
— K (@krm76201) March 8, 2015
Like im still trippin on how it went from 1:59 to 3:00
— Laura Hutchinson (@Lauuraamichelle) March 9, 2014
My phone went from 1:59 to 3:00 and I pooped
— Torri (@TorriP21) March 8, 2015