Nietzsche famously warned that "if thou gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes into you." Never has this warning to all the boys and girls at home been more acutely relevant than in the present social media free fire zone moment. "Shots fired on Twitter," is a comical understatement. What's euphemistically dubbed as "cyberbullying" is more accurately characterized as a thermonuclear exchange of bile, invective, and character assassination in the name of...persuasion? We are a society drowning in our own snark and devastated by our own discourtesy, ninety-nine percent of which we would never unleash in that quaintest and increasingly antediluvian of interactions, the face-to-face conversation. Robert Preston warned of "Satan's playground" in "The Music Man," referring to the smoke-filled pool halls of the late nineteenth century. He missed the mark, failing to envision the emotional No-Man's Land that would emerge with 21st century social media. So how does one cope? How does one prevail in the face of an electronic Frankenstein's monster that has turned so many inner lives into an emotional Love Canal? The obvious solution is to heed the words of Barry Corbin's general in "War Games," when he barked, "Just unplug the goddamned thing for Chrissake!" There's that. That, and a good walk outdoors is a sure tonic for the Cuckoo's Nest of the Internet. But even a physical retreat from the screen abyss does not unsee or erase the cruelties and creative ridicule seared into one's psyche or consciousness. What is the panacea for that? To the extent that there is any salve, any balm for the wounds inflicted by the electronic blast-o-gram, it is found in a kernel of sagacity imparted to me a few years ago, and it is this; "The world doesn't define you. YOU define you." Why then would you accept an external definition of yourself, conceived in malice and inaccuracy? When one internalizes the profound wisdom of that axiom, the evils of the Internet lose all their power, and you have your antidote to the abyss.
