Introduction

Today’s post was inspired by shower thoughts, books at the library, and, well, the internet. It all started, as usual, with a question. What is the internet?

Train Stations

The internet is network of train stations, a very very large one. Full of trains going from station to station, all the time. If you are on a train, or at a train station, you are said to be online. Wait, what’s at a train station? Well, it depends. I know that’s a bad answer, but wait a second. There are many different types of train stations.

The second most visited Train station is YouTube, and it’s a great example one type of train station. The video one. Imagine a bunch of benches. Let’s say about 3 billion. Once a person sits down at a bench, they are surrounded by a clear screen showing recommendations of videos they should watch. Each person’s screen is unique. If they get up and choose a certain video, it plays on a TV in front of the bench.

Of course, YouTube has clock towers too. In each clock tower, there is small room housing a YouTuber, someone who makes the videos that appear on each TV. They make their living off of the trains that visit the YouTube train station. Funnily enough, some of that money comes from advertisements for other train stations, perhaps ones like The Athletic.

The Athletic is an example of the library stations. These stations are divided in many rows of books containing volumes on different topics, such as sports, politics, music, science, or whatever anyone can think of really. You can tell what the most popular volumes are by the amount of comments, which is shown on the spine of the book. Each person can come by and leave comments at the back of the book.

There are many other types of train stations, such as online stores, social stations, stations dedicated to maps, or information on the weather. However, I don’t really have time to get into all of them.

Catastrophe

Each time, someone has to call the station they want to go to. If they get a return call, everything is alright. People can arrive on time to the station they want to go to. What happens when someone doesn’t get a return call? What happens if the number is removed from the main train station directory?

Catastrophe. People go to stations like Twitter: walking around, showing each other images and opinions, talking about how that number was removed, how people can’t access this one particular train station.

Sometimes if a catastrophe occurs, it feels like the world is collapsing. But there was a time before these weird and wonderful train stations, where people survived. Who knows whether these train stations have made our world better, if they have taken over too much our lives. There is a world outside of the stations, yet I choose to spend my listening to music instead of the birds. Perhaps I should stop contemplating the mysteries of the internet, if this even is a mystery.

I know, that didn’t make any sense. It wasn’t supposed too. That’s how the internet works. Sometimes it doesn’t make any sense. Maybe it’s not supposed too. Maybe life is not supposed to make sense. Story of my life. I want it to make sense.

White silhouette falling through a black void. Pause. Play. Stop. Start. Dancing, listening to music But the dancing is not smooth. It’s erratic.