The Internets: A Story of Love and Hate

I may be the last person you would expect to see managing communications and social media outreach for a small business. Doggedly resistant to Twitter. Irrationally dedicated to my Samsung flip phone and equally irrationally opposed to Smartphones. Lover of ink and paper. Paper and ink. The “Internets,” as I have been known to call that massive and barely comprehensible matrix of invisible threads (and a troll or two), are no place for a flower-child-smartphone-hipster-bookstore-nerd-in-denial-of-modern-technology-hippie. Right?

What do you mean? This phone is top of the line!

Wrong. You must be wrong, because here I am, suddenly Communications Manager for an amazing little holistic wellness center in Vergennes, Vermont called 2 Wolves. (And Events Coordinator, too. I’m sorry, I have to brag a little– it’s my first job with a title other than, “Our Intern,” “Toby Over There” or “Excuse Me Miss”) And here I am, starting a Twitter account on behalf of the center, learning a bit about website building, and gearing up for Instagram next. To a certain extent, I am probably wired for it, being a child of the Information Age. Computer keys feel like home and I can find my way around a website whether I want to or not.

So there’s the catch. I am, whether or not I resist it, predisposed to excel in this swamp of technology we call communication. Up until now, I have by and large resisted it (with the exception, of course, of blogging… and email… and, well, yes, Facebook. But compare me to the average “twenty-something” and it starts to look a lot more like resistance). I have long resisted the omnipresence of the Internet. Now, however, I plan to bend it to my will.

Below is a segment of the email I sent to the instructors and practitioners at the 2 Wolves Center before enumerating a long list of ways in which they could help me grow our online presence. I write:

The internet is an extraordinary and a terrifying thing. It can be an impersonal, vast network of virtual connections, but it can also be very local in its scope. First and foremost, it is a tool that we can use in any way we choose, and I intend to use it to build conscious, cocreative community right here in Vermont. I know many of our students are not plugged in on Facebook, Twitter, etc, but many of them are, and many potential students and participants are as well, and these tools can be an amazingly effective way of building our individual classes and our collective community.

There it is. The Internets (that’s “the Internet” to you) are a tool. Neither good nor evil in of themselves, but simply a vast, swampy, troll-ridden universe of as-yet-unfulfilled possibilities. Some beautiful. Some terrifying.

So here I am. Trying to create something beautiful and meaningful with that troll-swamp of invisible roads.