randy_byers

LJ posts are a kind of ping. "Anybody out there paying attention?" But whereas ping is trying to determine whether a host/server is out there and reachable -- whether the Other exists and can be accessed -- LJ posts often seem to be a way to determine whether the Self exists. If somebody responds to me, I must be here. This gets to be addictive. If I haven't posted for a while, I begin to feel invisible and immaterial. Likewise if a post gets no response. However, that's only true if I'm regularly on the internet. If I'm away from the internet, well, out of net, out of mind.

I used to have a close friend who I ultimately decided liked to piss people off because it proved that he existed and had an impact on the world. It seemed an unconscious reflex on his part. It wasn't enough to get somebody's attention, he had to provoke an emotional outburst. He was completely impervious to the anger, too. It contained no personal information for him. A bit autistic that way, perhaps. To him what he was doing was just an elaborate form of pinging, although clearly it was a bit of an unconscious power trip too.

Looking at the Wikipedia article on "ping", I'm now wondering what the existential/psychological equivalent of "ping flood" is. Nagging, perhaps.