Dear Mr. Internet,
I don’t know your exact whereabouts but I hope that by uploading this letter to your system, you’d take immediate notice of it. Not only is it on its to becoming a part of you, but it also concerns a primary part of you. You can call it feedback, I guess, if you will. A different kind of feedback. It does not certainly pertain to any errors, viruses, offensive material or complaints. It is a nota beta, though! Because what you are selling, everybody is buying. And those countless purchases have turned into a parody of difference.
But I did not (well, may be just for a second or two) succumb to your pandemonium of blogs, emails, images and so on. The list could truly go for ages. You are almighty because people turned their lives into you. I turned my life into you because I, for one, fear oblivion and you would never be forgotten. You may as well say that I am using a tiny bit of you to stay alive, but you are using all of me, my family, my friends and the rest of the world to buzz and keep disuse at bay. There is nothing wrong with that. We need each other to survive. But you are the one, fiddling with the greater power, the greater popularity. So what’s your cause? What are you promoting? I’ll tell you what – tolerance. Tolerance is good.
Tolerance is wonderful. Tolerance is paramount. But you can’t make the huge elephant leave the room without pulling down a wall, or may be two. And those walls I call prejudices. Once prejudices have been demolished the exotic, the batty, the strange become desired. They are the key to freedom. The key to standing out. The key to being different. What’s so enthralling about standing out with oddities and peculiarities, though?
Once it used to be exile – an undeserved punishment, a sentence for life. Being different was a pointless ordeal as it inevitably ended with an antonym – blending, that is. Not giving up. Simply giving in. You, as many others, saw the wrong in this act, spoke up and were heard for your cohorts follow suit. And all of a sudden, before you know it, difference is trending worldwide. “Dare to be different” is a sword with two edges. You made “different” cool. You made “different” ubiquitous. You made “different” different.
I met somebody yesterday. I shared a secret with him. I told him I was not interested. You know what he answered? He said that all girls were. But, silly boy, I am not all girls! I am not different! I am blandly myself! And that’s unique.
Mr Internet, you promote difference. You encourage it. You engender in imbecile young girls and boys the urge to sign up in tumblr and post pic after pic in yelps of despair, misunderstanding and depression. However, none of us that strive to be different are different. We all are ironically united by our struggle to be the odd ones. Our desire to stand out (not with qualities, but with suffering, pity and self-wallowing) has turned us into a group - a mob that is jostling its way out of itself. Funny, right?
I thought I was different. I thought nobody perceived me and nobody even cared to do so. But now I know that I can remain me, or change so that my social connections come up to my own expectations. May be you can’t understand me. May be I am your blot on the landscape. May be I am too batty to take in. But you are the same as me. I am the same as you. Because all I wish for is to be loved, to be liked, to be accepted. And I am all those things since I am not as radical as some people – the ones we used to call “different” with a note of disgust. They long for the aforementioned stuff stronger than I do; stronger than you do. But their way of showing it is unlikely and unpopular. Perhaps they believe that being noticed would contribute to acceptance but it does not for we are so engrossed with our own exaggerated peculiarities that we are blind to the rest of the world. They have the same objective, just unsuccessful ways and means.
I hope that you digest that intake. I made you my life, swept away by the hustle and bustle of your birth. May be it was a hasty decision. May be it was something I shall never regret. But nonethess I trusted you with the image of myself, with my thoughts, with my browsing history. I trust you enough to report an error and wish you work on it. I don’t want much. I just want you (and by you, the world) to understand this misunderstanding.
I am looking forward to some action.
Sincerely yours,
A part of you