In all of cyberspace, there exists more humans than anyone could imagine. Anyone but someone from my country. For my people, as you most assuredly know, are many. It is possible that India is the only country outnumbering the denizens of cyberville.
Having spent my childhood and beyond there, perusing the marketplace, mingling with the mindless peasants that would walkabout like wandering weasels woefully practicing and honing their meandering ability, I know a thing or two, but honestly a lot more than that, about people.
And yet the congregation of many outside my home, filling the streets of my town, had not prepared me for the society I would meet on the Internet. How could they? They had no knowledge, no concept, of cyberspace. They could not hide behind an anonymous Internet Protocol number as they strike out with razor-sharp wit lashing at lightening-speed, accounting for typing and a read-over prior to hitting enter, mind you.
No, these were what one may call real people. They were not merely figments of a cyber imagination, frolicking in the mind of a computerized community serving as a cognitive center of cyber-thoughts and pseudo-actions.
Living life is easy with eyes closed, yet even easier when all senses are interpreted, relayed, through computerized circuitry, supplying us with the reality which we want to see. And in this reality, how many friends can one truly possess? Would it depend on merely the size of one’s database? Or how loosely one defines ‘friend’?
I would confess to you that I have many cyber acquaintances myself, and yet, where are they now? For when one is sporked to a ceiling, there is no digital means for stepping in to lend a hand. One cannot take a bullet for their companion when their only means of connection is a telephonic circuit. Would a true friend, a non-figment, sit idly by and perhaps even laugh out loud at my humiliating situation? Would they perhaps roll on the floor and laugh their posterior off? I would think not. Yet the course of action for a digital buddy is greatly limited by his or her emoticon set.
It is now that I find myself realizing the true falsehood of this medium of a so-called social outlet. And yet, as it seems computers often do, it mirrors reality, human life and mentality, so well.
For if these figment friends are merely a numeric ghost of ones and zeros, then too might each and every real person, of flesh and blood, be a mental phantom created by one’s very own brain itself. And while we may strive to interact with these supposed people, can we? Do they exist? Or are they, as are the cyberville residents, figments of a macrocosmic mechanism?