Today, I found out my girlfriend is pregnant and then decided to break up with her. Why? We're lesbians. FML."
I stared at my Facebook.com wall in utter incomprehension. My boy-crazy best friend is now a lesbian? She has a girlfriend ... who is knocked up? And those letters — what the eff do those mean? It took me several days and an international phone card to surmise that a pregnant lesbian had not, after all, cuckolded my best friend forever. How is this possible, you ask? Tufts, meet Australia.
Before I left to go abroad, my parents tried to buy me all sorts of guidebooks and calling cards, which I foolishly waved away, assuring them that the wonders of Skype and Wikitravel.org would provide me with everything I could possibly need. For this reason, I spent the first few weeks of the semester with my foot in my mouth. What Wikitravel (or anyone else, for that matter) had failed to warn me about was that technologically, the nation of Australia has somehow managed to stay seven to 10 years behind the rest of the modern world.
Think about what the Internet was like in the '90s, when your giant desktop computer made sounds like a fax machine and no one was really sure what the point of e-mail was. Now imagine that instead of breaking up with your 12-year-old boyfriend over IM while listening to "No Scrubs" by TLC, you are simultaneously trying to research a term paper, look up bus schedules and reassure your mom via a plethora of technological portals that you have not contracted, and will continue to avoid contracting, the flu formally known as "swine." Despite living in a major metropolitan city teeming with all the business, culture and Thai restaurants I could ever ask for, I suddenly found myself feeling seriously technologically challenged.
Even after I learned to wrangle enough Internet access here and there to keep my mother satisfied that I was still alive and even to use Facebook as a barebones communication tool (Hey girl, Australia is CRAZZZYY! No Internet anywhere though. Talk to you in May xoxo Jessie!!!), a huge shift was taking place. Gone were the late-night (usually inebriated) group viewings of doglover199709 on Youtube.com, my close personal relationship with Perez Hilton and my unstoppable (or so I thought) Facebook stalking. Not only this, but in my five-month hiatus from my various Internet addictions, I missed the gateway for so many others, which explains my confusion over my best friend's new lover.
From Failblog.com to Mylifeisaverage.com, I missed 'em all, and now that I'm back, a funny thing is happening. Just like I can't bring myself to watch the dozen episodes of "Gossip Girl" I missed, I just can't muster the (motivation? energy? courage?) to meet and get to know these new Web site friends, or even catch up with the old (I'm sorry Perez!).
I don't know if this shift represents a loss or a gain. I've certainly gained free time ... but so many potentially riotously funny comments are flying right over my head. To be honest, I feel a little damaged and a lot less hilarious.
Who knows how long this will last — now that classes have started, the call of wireless Internet and endlessly entertaining one-liners may become too great for my stubborn subconscious to resist. What I do know is that I have to go now; while researching for this article I discovered Textsfromlastnight.com — and I'm back in the game!
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Jessie Borkan is a senior majoring in psychology. She can be reached at Jessie.Borkan@tufts.edu
