Hello, my online name is Mr Poopypants, and I’m an internet addict. I’ve been webless for six months now, and the wonderful girl I married in the meantime is posting this message on the web for me. I still don’t trust myself to post it without being sucked into that world where OMG, WFT, LOL, and BBQ actually mean things, and some of them not quite good things. My tale is one of trial and hardship, but a tale also replete with the wonder of overcoming information addictions. To start off, a little history.

I began dabbling in the world of computing when I was a youngster, probably around the age of seven. The things fascinated me. I couldn’t get enough. When my father — bless his departed soul — bought me my first 3600 baud modem, I was in heaven. I quickly joined several local Bulletin Board Services, trading files, and downloading at will. So began my transition to a internet addict.

A friend of ours introduced us to the World Wide Web right before our awestruck eyes, promising that it was the new way to order a pizza, dude. We surfed, we linked, we learned HTML, we were Alice in Wonderland.

The sad path to my addiction became evident when I neglected all other worldly pursuits to surf the web. I would sit for hours, slackjawed in front of a screen, staring at the information I was
scrolling through. I didn’t urinate anymore: it took too much time. I didn’t sleep, for pretty much the same reason. I no longer tended my beautiful flower garden outside, but that was because I hated flowers, and also because I wasn’t gay.

After six months of this, my parents finally noticed that I was missing, and began a frantic search through the kitchen to find me. I wasn’t in the kitchen. They searched every single room until they finally found me and woke me from my trance-like information-induced semi-conscious state.

But it wasn’t enough: I stumbled through my waking life as if it were a dream, longing for nothing but the loving glow of my computer. I suppose they didn’t notice this a lot, except for the fact that my father kept screaming at me about how I was “addicted to computers” and such. Really, I just found them very interesting; I would always reply that he was addicted to his stupid job, which was most certainly true, but rarely appreciated. Computers and information technology dominated my life until the day I got a girlfriend. She was so interesting that for a few moments I tore myself away from my CRT screen to stare into her eyes. Eventually, I wondered if we could somehow get her some cybernetic eyes so I could stare and surf the web at the same time. Killing two birds with one stone, I think I called it.

But through this all, my internet addiction continued to increase to the point where there was no point hiding it any longer: I broke up with my girlfriend, taking solace in the hum of my hard drive. During this period, many exciting new technologies came into existence, such as the Universal Serial Bus, an operating system names Linux, and the evolution the DVD-ROM. Instead of sating my increasingly ravenous desire for new technologies, these advances merely exacerbated the problem, making me dependent on forever increasing my knowledge, constantly buying more electronics, and spending more time online in chat rooms with my Slashdot-reading geek friends, none of whose real names I actually knew.

Alas, it all came to an end in a “snow crash” of sorts, in the great electrical outage of 2003. I had no recourse but to escape the cloying recesses of my cave-like dwelling and surface for a taste of what mother nature had to offer. Little did I know that Mother Nature was more like a mafia hitman than a true mother, as I developed several nasty skin rashes, was sunburned, and found myself surrounded on a regular bases by man-eating insects of the blood-sucking variety.

It was exhilarating. Unlike online games I had been playing, the parameters were as wide as the imagination: I may have been a +3 geek, but I found my Outdoorsman and Survivalist skills sorely lacking.

I’ve never gone back. Oh the life! I’ve climbed mountains, walked the urban landscape, taking plane rides to exotic destinations, and had the time of my life, quite literally. And I’m never going back, either. Never. I will not touch the internet ever again. And I urge you to join me. Take your fat fleshy fingers off your mouse and keyboard and get back to Real Life. It doesn’t matter how you do it. Just remember the advice of my father:

“You’re a fat, internet-addicted slob! When I was your age, I had already learned how to fix 2 different models of cars! I nearly froze my fingers off one night fixing my car and I haven’t been able to feel them since! No on in our family has ever been fat! Why are you fat, you stupid slob? You could be doing so much with your life. Look at your sister. I know she’s callously manipulating me into giving her money, and that she really thinks I’m a misguided blowhard, but she’s getting All This Stuff Done! All you’ve ever done is waste your life on computers? Where did that ever get Bill Gates? Huh?”

Yeah, that’s what I’m talking about.

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