Welcome to The Age of the Web Hermit 264
tyroneking writes "Phil Hartup on bit-tech.net has captured the Zeitgeist of the web-aware generation: The
Age of the Web Hermit describes how some lucky souls can live their lives, earn money, buy necessities and even find love on the Internet. 'Is there anything that we really need good old fashioned Real Life for any more?'; not me!"
What? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
In many places in this wide world, you can get pussy delivered.
Only on Slashdot could this be modded "Interesting".
Re:What? (Score:3, Informative)
30% Interesting 40% Redundant 30% Underrated
The sad thing is that when I made the comment, it was not redundant. But then, you can't expect moderators to actually read and/or follow the guidelines.
Re:What? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:2)
So yeah, I can get pussy.
And a hot babe and gf with it.
Re:What? (Score:3, Funny)
Well then in your case, you can just order down from upstairs.
Re:What? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:2)
I sometimes don't leave my house for a week at a time.
Re:What? (Score:2)
Re:What? (Score:2)
As Sandra Bullock demonstrated.... (Score:5, Funny)
Moral of the story? If you are a modern day hermit, atleast take the time to introduce yourself to the pizza man incase your stalkers find you out and erase your IDENTITY.
Alternatively, when being chased by phychopaths who want your data, remember to back it up on a trusty floppy disk. NOTHING can hurt those!
Alternatively, always choose Macintosh, the only laptop that effieciently upload viruses to alien space crafts and save the planet.
Alternatively, if you are as hot as Sandra Bullock and are also a modern day hermit, I would like you to have my ICQ#, I'm here to help ANY WAY I CAN.
The problem with that is... (Score:3, Funny)
Re:What? (Score:2, Funny)
http://www.fu-fme.com/ [fu-fme.com]
Being Alone is underrated.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I hate people that are just smother you, wanting to hang on you all the time...but, I guess it just is some people's nature to be one way or the other.
I've actually never understood people who just HAVE to be around other people...or they get lonely. I've seen it with guys...like they HAVE to be married, or they don't function right...never understood that. I've seen friends come out of bad marriages...and they just cannot seem to have fun being single...going home alone at night at times just seems to really bother them I guess. They'd be single for a bit, and get right back into marriage, often in bad ones again, they were so desperate to not be alone, they'd jump on the first piece of trim they hit and get married.....
I prefer the single life...because at some point...they or myself...goes HOME.
Re:Being Alone is underrated.... (Score:2)
However my gf is clingy but in a same way. MEaning she loves chatting with me and having me involved but loves to give me privacy when I need it. I learned to appreciate it more and being alone works only so long as it can cause depression. A gf will make sure you get your ass out of bed on your days off of work.
You mean besides SEX?! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:You mean besides SEX?! (Score:2, Interesting)
Really, the only thing you can't get from the internet is any sort of real, live, physical human contact (ignoring the fact that you can probably order a hooker online, but they still have to come to your home or wherever to provide any "service").
Re:You mean besides SEX?! (Score:3, Funny)
Pff... your hardware [onzin.nl] is obviously obsolete.
Re:You mean besides SEX?! (Score:2)
The internet... (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The internet... (Score:4, Funny)
Maybe I'm there... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Or perhaps you just need new friends. My friends and I go out plenty of times without resorting to getting plastered.
Its called being comfortable with yourself so you don't have to get drunk and act like you're not yourself
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:3)
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:2)
Hmm...exactly how does THAT happen? That is quite sad....hope it never happens to me.
Everything goes better with booze....
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:2)
Everything goes better with booze....
Personally, I cut back around 25 or 26 years old. I'm not dry, but most weeks I won't drink anything. 2 or 3 drinks when I do (over 2 or 3 hours).
This is from someone that used to drink every day, and bartenders knew me when I walked in the door. I'd drink anyone under the table, and was damn proud of it.
I'm not the same person I was at 21 - I've had good times and bad, and I'
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:2)
"Josey is my sexy husband. He's going to open a gamer cafe this summer and it's going to be sooo cool. But now he has to talk to me because he's so cute. "
Try not to generalize when talking about all the other idiots in the world, okay?
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:3, Funny)
Don't blame them for that, they're semi-conscious. As the conscious one, you're in charge of making things entertaining. Just don't forget to take your camera with you when you go out with your drunken friends. After a few "priceless" pictures, they should reconsider their ways
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:2)
Friends? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Maybe I'm there... (Score:2)
Unless you also use your laptop as a commode... (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think this is any more isolation than a serious resident of the library used to be 50 years ago. And when people in NY figured out (decades ago) that they could, say, write books for a living and have Chinese delivered at 3:00AM... it's scarecely different. In fact, I'd argue that a lot people who used to be hermits (or would have been if they were born 20 years earlier) are probalby more connected to the real world because the internet exists.
Unless, as I suspect, I'm currently typing this text into a big, scalable, and very flawed Turing test machine. If a response is posted to this, its non-sequitor-ness will prove my suspicions. Go!
Re:Unless you also use your laptop as a commode... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Unless you also use your laptop as a commode... (Score:4, Funny)
Hah! I knew it!
You have to log off eventually (Score:4, Funny)
Shut-ins (Score:5, Insightful)
Can you live locked in a basement having evrything shipped to you and slid under the door? Sure, but to me that sounds very much like prison.
No thanks.
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2)
Most of us. Careful with the generalizations, there.
Whether or not their seclusion includes a computer and an internet connection, they are still oddities of nature.
I agree, but so what? Seclusion with an internet connection still beats seclusion without, hands down. Yes, there are undoubtedly some people caught in a web-hermit rut who would be much happier if they got out mo
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2, Interesting)
In fact he not only traveled and socialized widely, even during his years at Walden pond, but even wrote in Walden, his journal of his experiment in minimalist living, that social interaction is one of the minimum requirements of human life.
And he didn't mean some form correspondence by that. The Internet only provides social interaction by correspondence.
Melville has been put forward as an example of the true writing solitary, but he had to live i
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2)
Wait a minute . . .
Re:Shut-ins (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, there are mentally unwell people who happen to be loners. That doesn't mean they typify the class.
Re:Shut-ins (Score:3)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2)
Re:Shut-ins (Score:5, Funny)
It's just sorta like Soviet Russia.
You don't use the pipe to access society, (prison) society uses the pipe to access YOU!
Re:Shut-ins (Score:2)
My rights online? (Score:4, Interesting)
whatever (Score:3, Funny)
Re:whatever (Score:2, Funny)
Just because you can... (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, when was the last time someone gave you a hug through your monitor?
Re:Just because you can... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Just because you can... (Score:2)
Re:Just because you can... (Score:2)
Meh. I'm not worried due to my health; cigarette smoke is the worst smell I've yet encountered. I'd walk a quarter mile to avoid it. Skipping out on a room full of drunks is a small cost.
Re:Just because you can... (Score:2)
Re:Just because you can... (Score:2)
reminds me off (Score:5, Informative)
When people start substituting real life with a digitall one it usually doesn't end to well.
Humans are by nature social beings, if the "old" ways fail one starts to look for an alternative.
Besides, real life interaction (think of sex ) will allways beat the "cyber" equivalent.
Social Hermits? (Score:4, Funny)
If you want a web hermit, go stick a picture of Stallman with the relevance of ESR and you've got yourself your posterboy.
Now if you can give me a dynamic World of Warcraft type immersive game where everyone else is AI, then maybe I'll be a hermit.
Digital life is pure luxury (Score:5, Insightful)
From the article: "...we have to ask ourselves -- is there anything that we really need good old fashioned Real Life for any more? Is a life of doing things and meeting people as our primitive ancestors in the late 20th Century knew it becoming redundant?"
Let's assume that a billion people on Earth have the money and time to be online regularly. (this is probably more than the real number) That leaves more than five billion without such a thing. There are significant percentages of people in rural parts of the world (from Africa to America and everywhere in between) who don't even have electricity, telephones, or real plumbing. And let's not even talk about food and medicine.
The upshot? If you have the capacity for living most of your life online, and you can take all that real-life survival stuff for granted, you are enjoying a life of luxury. And the best part is that, online, you will almost never encounter those poor starving folks, so you can safely ignore their existence (just like you do on your way to Starbucks). Enjoy!
Quick check: in terms of income, how do you rank globally [globalrichlist.com]?
(Go ahead, mod me as a troll... I've got karma to burn.)
Re:Digital life is pure luxury (Score:3, Funny)
I just think the statement is a little contradictory to the topic at hand. Shouldn't I be paying someone to go pick up my Starbucks for me since I am living a life of luxury and never want to go outside? I mean, if *I* have to go get my own Starbucks, obviously I'm not a hermit nor am I living a life of extreme luxury.
Re:Digital life is pure luxury (Score:2)
If you can afford Starbucks (especially regularly), then on a global scale, you are living in extreme luxury.
The "on your way to Starbucks" comment is drawn from the article, where the author refers to going to Starbucks to use the Internet access there.
Re:Digital life is pure luxury (Score:2, Insightful)
I'll counter that it's far easier to find out about and read about poor starving people than it was before the internet. It's also easier to research and
Evolve or Die! (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Semi-hermit (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Semi-hermit (Score:2, Interesting)
Question (Score:2)
If you would choose to be a hermit no matter what, then the internet is simply providing more forms of socializing. But if you're only a hermit because of the comfort of the internet then it might be a problem.
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
If anyone a "digital lifestyle" will save lives because it stops people from killing themselvs when they get depressed and lonely.
Re:Question (Score:3, Interesting)
That sounds logical but in my experience it's not true. A person who is depressed and lonely is still depressed and lonely while playing a video game. He's just temporarily entertained which keeps his mind of off it. But the underlying problem still persists.
Online socializing, however, does seem to help at least a little. As long as there is interaction with other human beings in some
Re:Semi-hermit (Score:2)
You go do that (Score:3, Funny)
I'm sure there's a lot of people out there who aspire to be a balding fattie eating delivery pizza every day and jacking it to internet pr0n. I hear guys like that drive the women wild.
I consider it natural selection -- self removal from the gene-pool.
Go Darwin go!
The answer: (Score:2)
Nope, nothing at all. Certainly not a job. Instead of real work, create a web site, post a witty article there, split it into 5 pages, each with about 40% ad content, some of that being flashy annoying banners.
if not real life, then real death (Score:2)
and heart disease [nih.gov] but other than that, no, you should be just fine without a real life, er, I mean without real life.
Getting there (Score:2, Informative)
Luv, twu luv. (Score:5, Funny)
Why, those lucky souls truly have everything in the palm of their hand.
You might be a web hermit if... (Score:4, Funny)
Actually i am one of those (Score:3, Funny)
'Net' is our country, we are its citizens. We are the 'Net'.
As an added bonus, i can opt to go out and 'socialize' in the old fashioned way, in the manner and time i choose.
Isnt it fantastic ?
Count me in! (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't really like people very much, they're noisey and too active for my tastes. I like things quiet and peaceful, if I must talk I'd rather talk with my fingers in a text basis than with vocal words.
I don't really feel I'm missing out on anything, as a kid I was very social, but then I don't have to deal with the huge bunch of idiots screaming and shouting.
We live in an era where everyone seems to want to be equal, we forget some people are just quirky and have no intrest in social activites. Some of us don't want to be a pop star, a footballer or whatelse is popular these days. We're happy to sit in the corner, do our own thing and just wish to be left alone unless we approach you.
I don't think I have a problem, I don't need you going "OH LOL YOU FREAK! YOU NEVER GO OUT!". All I need is for people to understand that they arn't the centre of the world and that people have different feelings and levels of social activity.
Is it really all that bad? (Score:3, Insightful)
Pure FUD. Oohhhhh, feel fear/pity/shame for the weirdo who spends all day at the computer! It's a stigma, as the article says, and it's become more and more acceptable, as the article says. That's because using the web makes sense. Hell if you work from home all day, why not have your groceries delivered? Accepting a delivery takes 10 seconds while going to the store could take an hour. That's one more hour to make money working, or kill farm mephisto in Diablo 2 five more times and hope he drops that's unique you've been looking for, thus achieving a little more happiness than the fool next door who barely understands a computer.
The whole point of the web is more freedom, independence and opportunity. People are taking advantage of this. No one said everyone online is creating a bomb shelter with a fiber link or that once you surf the web for 4 hours you become Agoraphobic. The article doesn't even have any good facts or figures. Who says you aren't going out to meet people? Who says you aren't socializing with neighbors? Who says you aren't exercising 3 three times a week? The only fact the article states is that more and more people are using the web to get the things they need, and it suddenly jumps to the conclusion that everyone who does this is a "web hermit."
And most importantly, no one said you aren't bangin' your girlfriend every 4 hours because you work from home and have plenty of time for impromtu sex! Who cares if you found your gf in a bar or two states away playing the same online game as you. If you like her, and she likes you, and you have a healthy sexual compatibility (provided she moves in with you - this is important), then fuck the world. You are most definitely still in the gene pool.
parenthood, work, suburbia (Score:5, Interesting)
College and grad school were great for socializing in person. There were people all around me who were interested in intellectual things, and it was even pretty easy to find people who were interested in the same intellectual things I was interested in. We were at the same stage in our lives, and although it seemed like we were working our butts off in school, the truth was that we had a lot of free time, because we didn't have kids, or pets, or lawns to mow.
The real world is a whole different deal. Nothing against my neighbors, they're nice people and I enjoy shooting the breeze with them now and then, but we just have nothing in common. Parenthood, work, and living in suburbia just aren't very conducive to making contact with people who care about books, or jazz, or free information.
Internet relationships tend to be shallow and temporary, but if I didn't have e-mail, usenet, and (I admit) slashdot, my opportunities to have any kind of an intellectual life outside my own head would be extremely limited.
My family and I just spent three weeks in Greece and England, and it was an amazing contrast with the kind of alienating suburban environment I live in here in the U.S. In Athens, extended families go out together for dinner in sidewalk cafes at 10 in the evening. In little farming villages in Greece, the older men hang out in coffee shops and talk. In England, people hang out and talk in pubs. The U.S. is just pathetic, especially where I live (Orange County, CA), in terms of giving people spaces where they can interact with the rest of society. Everybody just drives places in their air-conditioned SUV's. Maybe shopping malls are the closest equivalent we have, but I just don't enjoy them as places to hang out, people-watch, or run into friends.
Re:parenthood, work, suburbia (Score:2)
My advice: move to Irvine, and either join a church [*] or club.
Why, just last night, my wife and I were finishing walking our dog when one of our neighbors was having tea on his front porch with another of our neighbors. So we dropped my. (the fresh blueberries were delicious). I filled in my neighbors on the details of fourth neighbor whose mother had just died of a heart attack, so we took up a collection to send flowers
Re:parenthood, work, suburbia (Score:3)
The spaces are still there, but most suburbanites have conditioned themselves not to notice them. I'm not sure how it happened, but it's true. I lived i
Shooting yourself in the foot (Score:2)
The number one problem with people in IT, they cannot talk to non IT people. Ever
Stupid People = Extroverts (Score:5, Funny)
1960's televised play (Score:2)
I remember a 1960's era play about a family working from home, on terminals, and never having to go anywhere, and how it affected life. I believe it was on NET (National Educational Television), a predecessor of PBS. Anybody else remember this? Perhaps a reference?
Got over hermit phase by getting on the ballot. (Score:5, Interesting)
Since June 1 I've been collectinfg the signatures necessary to Get on the Ballot [google.com] as a candidate for the United States Senate, challengeing the clueless incumbent Herb Kohl in the Democratic Primary.
As of today, it's official, my 2198 signatures are sufficient.
Re:I was going to post something witty... (Score:2)
The Cage? (Score:2)
Asimov's story (Score:2)
The Naked Sun (Score:2)
actual net hermit (Score:3, Interesting)