I wrote this trying to get inspired for the slideshow project. It almost worked...

Your individuality goes so far as your online moniker. Your username is your persona. Privacy has degraded to the point where it only extends to your password. Facebook and twitter actively and proudly seek to inform the world of your every doing, instantaneously. The entire point of Twitter is to give mini updates on your life throughout the day. Cell Phones have abolished privacy, anyone can be reached at any time with no effort; phone numbers aren’t even memorized anymore. This constant connection destroys a sense of self, no one needs to probe into their selves anymore. It is the death of the individual—everything is now a network. Social networks, professional networks, online communities, MMORPGs, everyone is connected.

At the root of it is the never ending search for a connection on a personal level. These online communities are empty though. The connections are only zeros and ones, overlapping databases on a server somewhere. The term “friend” has lost all significance. People you’ve never met are added to your tally of friends in a continual self “pat on the back.” I have 344 friends on Facebook. Those relationships are completely meaningless… but everyone needs to be connected, everyone needs to be loved.

And that’s what it comes down to… maybe the higher the friends count, the more you feel like you’re popular, that people like you. It’s self deception. I think it’s the empty connections that fuel the addiction. You get that connection so easily on the internet, because you can hide behind the screen, its easy and it feels good. To have that momentary connection, that’s what we search for. But the connections are empty because you’re so far removed from the person. You can’t have a connection with text. You can’t have a connection with pixels. You can’t have a connection with a screen. Not a real one.