Empathy Dependency

After a load of (positive) peer pressure from my favorite dick of a best friend last year for not having watched the movies, I had finally given in and decided to read the Lord of the Rings novel—and I meant read. It’s my moral belief to always read a book before watching a movie! The school librarian, earning a spot in the awesome people of the world list, instantly dropped everything to help introduce me to Middle Earth: He flat-out rejected me the Fellowship until I had read the prequel book what started it all—the Hobbit. This book, along with its sequel, instantly became a favorite of mine!

In fact, I went out to purchase a copy of the Lord of the Rings book* as soon as I had money in my hands! I got a copy of the Hobbit on my Kindle and set out to learn all I could on the rich history of Middle Earth, gobbling up information over the Undying lands, the Istar, the different races of Elvenkind, and the men of Gondor, and Middle Earth herself.

You can imagine my sweet elation at finding out Bilbo and the Dwarves would be brought to the big screen by director, Peter Jackson.

Instantly, I began gorging myself on all the articles I could find, sharing them on Facebook, spamming my friends with the movie, and absorbing every released image. I ate away at the differences between the book and movie, along with its similarities.

One moment among these stood out to me the most, however. As per usual, I was very much late to the news of two fandoms of mine crossing, and began hyperventilating and squealing uncontrollably at my discovery of Bilbo Baggins being portrayed by Martin Freeman, better known to the Sherlocked at Dr. John Watson.

I was jumping for joy and scaring the neighbors when everything in my world came to a screeching halt: Tumblr was down.

By the Valar I was devastated! That beautiful site was my outlet! There are no LoTR fans in my family, and I only had two friends whom really liked the books and movies! I needed these strangers there for me, to understand and share in all my feels! I needed those hilarious images crossing the fandoms to feel complete—to relieve my happiness. Then it hit me:

We’re all really damn spoiled.

As a society we’ve all gotten so spoiled by this miracle technology, we expect people to care about things we care about, even if they’re complete strangers—we assume as fact this will happen. Caring! I was so amazed that this word could be reduced to something so trivial yet blown up to something so vast by the internet: the feeling and exhibition of concern and compassion for others looked for in people behind the clacking of a keyboard.

I remember when my elder sisters felt special and privileged when one had to give up the phone for the other to use the internet (why the hell were they on the internet anyway? What did people do on here then?!). Hell, I still remember sucking up the courage to sit through and weather the storm of the dial up modem and the happiness that ensued after the (seemingly) warm voice saying “Welcome!”

I began to wonder if, as a generation, we were too indulged by this sense of self-worth. Do we really love ourselves too much as to expect empathy? Or was this a coping of sort of mechanism to make ourselves feel closer to others? Have we really become so anti-social strangers are more welcomed than people we know? And how much do we really know about either side? The argument could be made that we’re more open to strangers, but when did the classic “stranger danger” safety tip become null and void for the sake of our self-expressions? And how much of that is really us?

I remember being genuinely scared of sights like Facebook and Twitter since people could follow you on them. I found it disturbing a site would name the connection of two separate pages “following”. The term “stalking” on the internet has become something of a joke; a quick laugh, to downplay you’re admiring of another individual. This is what we’ve come to. We expose ourselves to the world in a matter that would probably make Narcissus blush, yet we can’t help but do so.

And in a sense, who could blame us? The internet was initially created as a way to share information to massive number of people at once. With a slight tweak of the definition of information, you have the very basis of our social media structure.

But what of our attachment to this?

I don't think I would ever leave. I don’t think ever could.

I can slowly but surely feel myself losing my sanity, but I'd never leave this place. It's a society within a society, thus explaining the success of the anime Sword Art Online. In this world, we are who we wish we were, not who we really are . . . . . which is also concerning. I don't think I'm much different here and, well, here, but I enjoy the company of strangers, be they lovely lies or beautiful people. I don’t know what that says about me.

With Love,
Nikola Strange.