I have a love hate relationship with computers. Like I don’t stare at my keyboard searching for the Any key, but I’ve managed to crash Ollie’s entire computer with a hectic Trojan horse virus I installed while trying to download Kocktails with Khloe. I am a bit of a contradiction; I can cut on Premiere Pro but suck at Excel spreadsheets, I don’t froth over formulas but I go cray cray for the Adobe Creative suite. I have to see a purpose, it has to be linked to my passions and the platform/program has to be fun or creative for me to retain any complicated mechanics.
I do love the internet, it’s given me Pepe the frog after all. I am a meme queen, even the lame ones crack me up. I love social media and feeling like we’re all connected via the wired world. I love that digital content transcends time and place, that information can be shared across borders. But, I think I’m verging on internet noob status. I mean until I met Ollie I had no idea the deep web existed, Reddit wasn’t on my radar and I thought 4chan was a Chinese nightclub. To be honest, this level of naivety can be nice, you’re not exposed to any nasty cumbox, two girls one cup, crazy shit, that you literally can’t un-see.
Once you get really into the internet it can be highly addictive. You can spend hours in epic Youtube spirals, clicking related content til you’re in some dark and unrecognisable place. Still, the trolls can be wildly entertaining, and I love the way hard core net users have an uncanny ability to sniff out a rat and absolutely punish.
My only gripe with websites, apps and social media is the constant need to update and reinvent. Ollie tried to explain to me that this is a required measure taken to ensure the platforms stay relevant, and don’t keel over and die like Bebo or Myspace. But sometimes the changes seem strange and unnecessary; why did Instagram change its logo when the original was so much cooler, and why did Facebook expand its options for "reacting" to a post when a like was enough. I know, I sound like a total tech dinosaur, afraid of change.
I got my first ever very own computer earlier this year. Prior to this I was using my sister’s hand me down mac book; ancient, white, heavy. It was a bit like the terminator, old but not obsolete. It did everything I needed up until it exploded this February.
Buying my new computer proved to be a pretty interesting experience in itself. Ollie took me to the neckbeard’s paradise, MSY. It’s such a weird shop, you have to know exactly what you want before you go there, you can’t peruse items or test things out. You find what you want off an excel spreadsheet walk up to the counter, there is no friendly banter, you just read out the item number. The whole transaction lasted like 15 seconds. Part of me really wanted to ask some dumb AF question, like “Can this laptop connect to the internet?” just to infuriate the socially inept sales clerk.
I’m never going to be a kid genius when it comes to computers and that’s OK with me. I can navigate to Know Your Meme and that’s really enough for me.