Desensitization by Screens

I realize that I hardly actually compose enough entries within this blog to maintain it, but I do like it, and those two times a year when I'm struck with something, I like that it's here. School ran me very dry from inspiration, and every uninspired word I could think up was devoted to the final papers of my college career. Nothing to write home about, I assure you.

Most of the things by which I am struck are very known common knowledge. This will be no different. This began about thirty minutes ago as I was watching a movie. The movie is irrelevant, except for the fact that there are at least two characters in this movie. Near the end of one scene, as I watched the characters on the screen of my laptop, I thought, 'Those were two real people, in the same room at some point.' Now, I know. Of course, those are real people, and the actors are still alive and well, I'm sure, but this thought struck me because I have had a lot of experience with computer screens in the past year or so.

As I've mentioned before, when I have written, I began a relationship. The circumstances were less than ideal, considering the respective geographical locations of each person involved, but it persisted through the immense aid of Skype, a computer program through which people can voice chat, type chat, video chat, etc. Essentially, and probably brutally honestly, I began a relationship with a computer screen. I had some friends suggest this computer screen was actually a sixty-three year old man in California who liked to touch himself, but I had faith in my computer screen.

A couple of months ago, I read an article about a Japanese man who married his gaming character. The article pointed out the ridiculousness of it all, but somewhere, there was a tiny part of me that understood. Afterall, I had a relationship with a computer screen. I'd have married the computer screen and been painfully happy. Of course, I always wanted more than a computer screen, but if a computer screen was what I could get, then a computer screen it was.

I've always heard it said that people are desensitized by movies and television, and, while I think this could be true, I think that it is the actual screen that desensitizes. That is why it is so easy to criticize someone on a screen, whether it is an actor on television or in a movie, or just a blogger or a poster in a forum on the internet. The screen gives the appearance that he/she is not real, in addition to the anonymity that the screen yields.

This is such a profound thought for me because I met the person on the other side of the computer screen recently. Of course, I knew this person was real, and I even knew that I would meet her, but this meeting was essentially unexplainable... which makes for bad writing I suppose, but the point is that it took time to realize that this person does exist. This person does eat, breathe, and sleep. This person has a real heartbeat. In the short days that we were together, I grew accustomed to a real human being interacting with my actions and seeing me throughout my daily life. Needless to say, it was a much different dynamic than the relationship with the screen had been.

This meeting took place throughout the course of a vacation, of course, and the Nashville leg of the vacation is over. I thought the day I dropped my visitors off at the airport, I would wake up the next day thinking that it had been a dream. Unfortunately this didn't happen. I woke up the next morning remembering what it was like to have a real human being in the same room as me. I woke up the next morning remembering what it was like to talk to a person rather than a computer screen. My friends say that I should revel in the memories and be happy that they happened, and I am happy they happened -- ecstatic, in fact, but, no matter how hard I try, those memories don't detract from the feeling that has been left with me and my computer screen.