Is There Life on Mars?

02-26-2309

I really don’t know how to feel about virtual social networks anymore. At first it was nice to create an avatar to help define your net persona, and thus affect how your real identity is perceived by other members. But the programs have degenerated to shoutboxes or personal forums, digital walls for people to leave messages on, and I think extreme egotism might be to blame. See, once you’re given unlimited digital influence you must inevitably fall into an egocentric mindset. It’s only a matter of time before an empowered individual begins to believe that their simple existence is significant.

These social applications allow you to keep your friends, or anyone else stuck in your network, involuntarily abreast of your routine and daily experiences. It’s not uncommon for a person to manage profiles on multiple networks, as each will serve a different function. For instance, one generalized network may be great for keeping in touch with old friends and classmates, while another very similar one may help you meet new friends or dates. You could have an account for artwork and or another for video, an even different writing or a music profile to show off your playlist, too. There are even systems that let you see which sites other members view and enjoy most, or browse someone else’s collection of bookmarks. But most importantly, they exist for you to whore yourself about for personal gain.

No matter what it is you‘re doing, whether you’re using a site to fish for positive feedback on poorly doctored images or showing off feeble attempts at creating a piece of art or something worth reading, you’re undeniably using the internet as a self-esteem booster. You’re trying to turn nothing into something that validates your being, trolling for others who will feed your ego, others somehow even more irrelevant than you. A page of txt or script, or a handful of jpegs that you slag out because you didn’t have anything better to do with your time, raping the eye sockets of everyone you could force them upon. Maybe you just leave notes and cute animations on other people’s walls, even ones you don’t know, and encourage them to respond, just to see a new comment alert the next time you log in.

It might seem overwhelming to manage it all, but have no fear ‘cause there’s an app for that. Just download a social super-application, one that extends its tendrils to comm and pda systems, and has the ability of controlling all your profiles on other networks. From your handset, COG, touchi or even texti you can receive notice from or transmit updates to the nets from anywhere you can get a signal out. You can begin to complain about your day, or make entertainment and cooking suggestions, or unleash a senseless onslaught of spam, or whatever it is that you do when you get home to your computer — before you even get home to your computer. A collection of blinks from the ephemeral present, already passing. Not only will it update your mood on this profile, but on each and every profile to which you grant it access. It will sicken you when you realize what a useful tool this could have been.

To be honest, I have no idea what to use it for. Really, the novelty of being able to announce to everyone that I got a cup of coffee before I even swipe my chargecard fades out quickly. No, instead I feel the whole idea of a two-sentence update defeats all progress. Anything worth doing or saying can’t fit into 160 characters. No matter how hard we try, we always need more space to say what we need. And frankly I feel like it’s impossible to present my given current state in a serious manner when everyone else around here is just cheering any trivial victory they can like. So since I have this communicative exchange (if it can even be considered an exchange) I feel obliged to inform you with more than two lines.

The year is 2309, today is the 26th of Feb and it’s 3 o’clock in the afternoon. It’s mostly sunny and 71 degrees outside, a high for this week but not uncommon this early in the year. Tonight Phobos will be a waxing crescent and Deimos, as full as it ever looks, will actually rise at about the same time as his bigger brother. Twice or so every week they’ll ride in together from the western horizon to strike fear and terror, respectively. Otherwise Mars’ moons are inconsistent and unreliable at best.

I am a young Earthling male of Ganymedean descent; fair skin, dark hair and hazel eyes. I’m not first-gen or anything though. More like fourth or fifth so I don’t have pointy ears like native Jovians. Since my family doesn’t have anything else exotic anywhere along the line I lack antennae, whiskers and an accent. I’ll turn 22 in less than a month, and have only lived on Mars for two-and-a-half years now.

I transplanted to be close to a girl I was dating back then, but wonderful as that was the relationship only lasted about a year after I came. It used to mean more to me before I realized I had always wanted to come here on my own, and did so to fulfill some sort of sordid childhood fantasy of paradise, using her as an excuse to get closer to Mars. Growing up in an exurb prepared me for OC living. I am more familiar with wealth, narcissism, and decadence in general, than most of us Earthlings who don’t have nice weather year round, palm trees and picturesque sunsets consistently.  I know I’ll need to move up the coast or to Elysium to really use Mars to its full potential, but here isn’t a totally fragged place to start trying to carry out my dream.

It hasn’t been that easy to locate a good launch point for my all-important ambitions to take off. I don’t have a job and the semesters I do go to school I attend very few sections, leaving a lot of free time during which I don’t accomplish much, reading an eBook constantly or watching a lot of movis these days. I still don’t have my crawler legalized so I hang out with Gerund and his lovi Han most of the time. I usually have to use his crawler to chauffer him to and fro, so that I have a vehicle to drive at my leisure some days.

Sometimes Dune meets up with us and the band jams out objectively. Sometimes we drop in when the Zenith Bros. are at their instruments and we have a chance to keep our chords polished lending them some vocals. You wouldn’t accuse us of commiting to any productive activities, spare the occasional courier mission for the imaging studio. Most days we just spark up some fire and get elevated.

Hmm, I seem to have deviated drastically from any relevance…or maybe I was just too basic. Nah, that was just pointless, I should just use one of the million tricks you use when you can’t think of something to say in your headline. Like, I could talk about the video game I’m playing, or the book I’m reading, or the show I’m watching, but I just don’t feel right name-dropping. So I can’t really list what albums I’m listening to, or what movies I’m downloading at the moment. I could write a deeply cryptic message based off a corny inside joke that no one who actually checks my status would understand, but that’s about the weakest thing to do for one of these things. Almost as hax as sending spiteful messages to a loved or hated one via status.

Instead of going on about all of this for a few pages, I think I may just post my favorite cheesy movi quote.

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