almost midnight on a friday, and where else would i be but in my room on my computer listening to a song that i first listened to over half a decade ago.

manic street preachers - motorcycle emptiness

now the song's over. guess that makes it easier to concentrate. not that i'm doing much concentrating. i guess i mean more that i'm able to write more efficiently, which i suppose is related, but i just don't feel like i'm "concentrating" exactly. more like autopilot with an observer. which seems like how things tend to go in everyday human existence.

i'm drawn to writing here cause i read something that felt like a little bit of a punch to the gut, something that seemed so trivial. a short sentence written by an asshat on the internet, or if i'm being empathetic, someone using the internet who was acting like an asshat. i was watching some youtube videos by this dude i stumbled across today who talks mainly about linux-related things but sometimes goes into history and language, among other intellectual but "non-technical" things. and one of these "non-technical" things was the topic of the video upon which this comment was posted: "haha that's cool but good luck flipping burgers." i'm paraphrasing. and that's what shook me up a little. gave me a good ol' dose 'a despair that i suppose i haven't quite felt in maybe a week. now i don't really care who posted it or what their intention was. it bothers me because the statement implies a uselessness, and hence meaninglessness, to learning about history, in this case what people in the past thought about cognition and language. of course that can be extended to learning anything that isn't applicable to a concrete job. the job stuff doesn't really bother me. hell, it was a stupid thing to post in the first place (but boy did it have a lot of thumbs-ups) and just shows this person is kind of a dumbass if not just trying to be funny or trying to get internet points. it's the realization of the absurdity or inherent meaninglessness of existence on its own, that yeah, at face value, learning things doesn't really do anything of intrinsic value because nothing in this world has any intrinsic value, outside of the individual, that is. and since learning is something i really dig, i couldn't help but take it personally. not that i meant to take it personally; you know how these things happen.
it's kinda weird to be so sure of things in your head, then to be blindsided when you face the world or other people. the incongruence can be unsettling.
but to go back to this whole existential crisis bullshit, as i feel that i can't leave this story hangin', the thing that brings me back to non-despair mode is that i'm fucking living my life, fighting the world that dooms me to oblivion. well, that and the passage of an hour. i suspect that i'll have more to say on that matter in a couple days; i'm planning on reading the myth of sisyphus this weekend.

now, related to the title. it was something i was thinking around the time when i opened up this webpage, and i liked it as a title, but really i had other things in mind to write about (the stuff above). it's related to my fears about exposing myself to the world and my resulting vulnerability that would come about as a result of posting something personal online. and it doesn't have to have my name associated with it; it has to be me expressing something personal about myself. it's scary, i suppose. but i'm writing all this, and i'm not all that hung up about it. i think it's something i could get used to. i used to write personal things only on paper because i was afraid of writing on a computer, that some virus somewhere could see what i was writing, associate me with it, and then what? i could get attacked or laughed at by some clown i don't even know. which is stupid when you think about it but scary if you've got a hundred-thousand year old limbic system that's overly sensitive to outside stimuli. i did switch to typing, keeping things on my hard drive (not online), and here i am now. i ain't gonna take this one down, if anything as a fucking victory against the part of me that wants to hide from everything. it's kinda wacky; i'd used a hard drive wasn't even encrypted, but the one i'm using now is, and i'm still leery of writing personal things on here. it's partly cause i'm going to use this computer for grad school, and god forbid someone gets into my shit and sees what i've--gasp--written. also note that said unencrypted hard drive belonged to this computer that i used during undergrad. so it really seems like a matter of me getting comfortable with putting my writing in a particular place.

in general, i think internet privacy and an individual's control over their data is important. from what i just wrote, it may seem like i'm just paranoid. but there is a big difference between one's data being used and exploited by "the man" and some rando peeping your shit. the former case is happening, and there are valid fucking concerns, politically, philosophically, and psychologically, that are raised about it (but that's another post). as for the latter, there's not really any good reason to be worried, unless the rando in question was malicious, which is something i've not really ever been too concerned with. i suppose it's more of a fear of displeasing people that i don't want to displease. weird. it's almost 1 am now. i'm gonna sign off.