# on closing your email account theory: that repeatedly checking your email account yet finding none is a strong cause / example of digital depression today you closed your email account for good after mistakenly and uselessly reopening it several times you've recently started to feel like the movie chracter 'grandma death' in donnie darko making ir wobbly way every couple of unhappy hours to ir rusty mailbox at the lonesome end of that dusty driveway only ever to find it empty - a deafeningly silent (social) void there should be a t-shirt with "all you ever get is spam" emblazoned across the chest in pink - a warning repeatedly finding the inbox profoundly devoid of signs of human contact just makes your heart sink and stressed but even worse is discovering hundreds of brainless mails in the spam filter often from the exact same person andor bot wow you think - these people / processes have even less of a life than the 'me' you feel incredible relief after closing your account; the burden of being chained to these machines and ir petty demands is often immense logging on again and again in the utterly vain hope that someone's contacted you you: "it's not really a special message to you. mr cole" (twelve monkeys) it starts to feel like aspergers - just without the comfort had in obsessive repetitive behavior you've tried many times sending out personal messages of importance and wit to people who had 'freely' posted ir email address online if you post your email address online you must want and expect others to email you - right? in these mails you thought you were being charming polite thoughtful positive - both vitally interested in what they had to say and encouraging of ir endeavours but they never seemed interested in your words; perhaps you asked them the wrong questions or were simply boring maybe by displaying ir email address they were only being polite - like when a movie casting director casually tells ir secretary to hand you a business card and says "er yeah - call me" ey has a thousand of those cards printed in bulk and really doesn't want to know you - but only to appear generous and open to others because that's how likes to consider himself or maybe the people you emailed were just too busy doing all those things a life filled with endless amazing events and brilliant soul expanding experiences is about - an endless cornucopia of fun and excitement - oh the infinite online possibilities! *tumbleweeds roll past in the deep electro-desert night* in (/virtual) reality however: everyone only ever seems fundamentally interested in themselves - ir own weird arts b.s after all what did you expect - you might as well of sent out letters to random people worldwide if you got a letter in the post from a stranger you probably wouldn't sit down and answer it with a letter of your own you don't know them - they could be anyone; heck they could even be you - an arbitrary online anybody and yet everyone considers everyone else - apart from themselves 'naturally' - a random online stranger but then we're almost always apart from others despite this largely false sense of wired online (/pseudo) connectivity look at your flat anonymous postmodern blog and all the other dull ways we keep ourselves busy - all in order to continually convince ourselves that "at least something's happening right?" hello? is there anybody out here..? *24-7-365 liquid neon lightning flash between hollow synaptic nodes* // republic of bob