The current New Yorker has an article looking at the recent spate of books discussing the effect of Internet technologies on social interaction. As one might presume, a lot of these books bemoan the fact that the Internet is cutting down on incidents of person-to-person interaction (though I’m curious as to whether anyone has actually validated this supposition.) Screen time is competing with face time, so to speak.

Of course, these theories ignore one obvious but potent truth: most people are incompetent, uninteresting idiots and any excuse to to get away from them should be clutched to our chest as one would a life preserver in the frigid Atlantic. Most of our fellow humans have nothing to offer; not profound thought, not genuine affection, they are merely empty vessels going through life spouting out cliché drivel and meaningless blather. I would happily flee to a website with a Java applet of Tetris rather than encounter them.