Ghostbook

The consolation of the Internet used to be virtuality: the possibility of being completely honest or expressing parts of yourself that were somewhat left unexpressed by matter-of-fact everyday life. Facebook changed this all. Imposing to register with your real name and surname (even if you can easily escape this, but let's say that it's more than strictly recommended) makes you "trackable" like a package that has been shipped from your postoffice. It is founded on this voyeuristic longing (yours or others'), on this tempting curiosity of seeing if you can meet that ex-classmate, that old childhood friend, that girl you used to hang up with 100 years ago... so, you add someone or are added by someone and feel the pressure of accepting his/her friendship because you fear that person could get angry or get offended. The best part is that in the last 15 years both of you didn't give a damn of what the other could think, feel, or live. Let's add what I would define as "psychological revenge": that "you-know-I-wasn't-that-shit-you thought-I-were-because-I-achieved-this-and-that" sort of feeling. I wonder why I thought I could appreciate a virtual contact with people I don't stand in real life. Probably, because they were non-existent for me and completely forgot why I hated them. I don't know if this counts as Buddhist forgiveness, but it's the best that I can do.

Anyway, let's go to this new kind of virtuality, where the people you know or you used to know haunt you and create a virtual hierarchy that mirrors the matter-of-fact everyday life you are supposed to escape through virtuality... you hear them thinking: "ok, you can be this or that, but we know who you are because we have known you in a certain spam of time and now, you can touch dead people and make them live again, but we know who you are because we have known who we thought you were. Period". Yes... period and respect for periods. Something is gone forever and in most cases (but I don't want to generalize here) it was better as it were. It looks like Pet Semetery (mispelled as it was in the title): you cried so much the death of your cat and then, after all, you realize that it was better off dead than scarily alive. Imagine if it's not even your cat, but let's say the neighbors' parrot, a poor being you weren't particularly fond of... All those people who were part of your past come from the mist of "Tir Na Nog", they closely remind you of a very kitsch Halloween parade: they are there like sheets that pretend to be ghosts, right there in front of you... not so different from the past, but not the same either... mixing up with people from your present. The idea that they are there ready to mix up with your future makes you think of a sort of bad karma. They claim your reality through virtuality. They suck the future out of you. Their main evil power is the intent of making you feel exactly as they made you feel in the past, they virtually (again) recreate hierarchies and coalitions you were left out from (people just ignore you, so why did they ask at first or accepted your request?). Now, my dear, you have the power of the cross... no religion in this metaphor. Just click the cross beside their names and they will disappear like a bunch of vampires in synthetic capes.