The Internet is a Beautiful, Empty Graveyard
The internet is a glorious beast. A labyrinth of information, cat videos, and people screaming into the void.
It’s a place where you can spend years scrolling, clicking, absorbing—and yet, when you step away, what do you really remember?
I love it. I live in it.
And yet, if I try to recall a truly unforgettable moment that happened only online, my mind goes blank.
Memes? Forgotten.
Reddit threads? Lost in the digital abyss.
Even the countless hours of learning? A blur.
Immanuel Kant, that 18th-century philosopher with a forehead so large it could hold a town hall meeting, had something to say about this.
He believed that raw experience wasn’t enough to produce knowledge—our minds had to shape it, process it, live it. And that’s where the internet fails us.
It gives us endless content but no real experience.
And Kant? He would have hated it.
Knowledge Needs More Than Just Information
Kant wasn’t a man who wasted time. He lived in Königsberg, never traveled, never married, and still managed to change the way we think about thinking.
His big idea? That knowledge isn’t just dumped into our heads like water into a glass. We shape it. We organize it. We make it ours.
And that’s why the internet is so slippery.
You can gorge yourself on facts all day, but if you don’t turn them into something real, they dissolve.
A Wikipedia rabbit hole at 2 AM is not an experience. It’s just borrowed knowledge that your brain refuses to file under “important.”
I’ve read entire books online, but the ones I remember best are the ones I held in my hands.
The ones with torn covers, with margins I scribbled in, with coffee stains on the pages.
The internet doesn’t leave stains. And stains—those little imperfections—are what make memories stick.
The Harlem Shake Theory of Memory
Remember the Harlem Shake? That viral fever dream that had people wearing horse masks and flailing their limbs to an electronic beat?
It was everywhere, and yet, I don’t remember watching a single video of it.
What I do remember is standing in my friend’s kitchen, wearing a bedsheet like a toga, waiting for the bass drop so we could all explode into nonsense.
That’s what made it unforgettable. Not the pixels. Not the views. But the real-life absurdity of the moment.
The internet is an amplifier, not a creator. It throws things at us, but unless we catch them—unless we pull them into the real world and do something with them—they pass through us like ghosts.
Online Friendships Are Shadows Until They Step Into the Light
I’ve met incredible people online. We’ve had deep conversations at 3 AM, shared jokes that made me wheeze with laughter, even worked on creative projects together.
And yet, the ones that mattered—the ones that still hold weight—are the ones that made the jump into reality.
I think about an old online friend I had years ago. We talked daily. Laughed. Shared music. Then one day, life happened, and we stopped.
Now, it’s like they were never there. A name on an old chat log. A voice I can’t quite remember.
But the friends I’ve met in person? The ones I’ve sat across from, clinking glasses, arguing over movies, driving through the night with the windows down?
Those memories don’t fade. Because they happened in a place my body remembers.
The Illusion of Infinite Knowledge
The internet makes us feel like we know everything. Any question can be answered in seconds.
Who invented the lightbulb? Google it. What’s the capital of Mongolia? Google it. What’s the meaning of life? Google has 500 different answers for you.
But real knowledge isn’t about having answers. It’s about understanding.
And understanding takes time, struggle, effort. The internet gives us shortcuts, but shortcuts don’t make for lasting memories.
I’ve spent hours watching tutorials on things I can’t remember. But the time I tried fixing my own sink, got drenched in dirty water, and nearly destroyed my bathroom?
That’s a memory. Because I did something. Because it mattered.
The internet gives us the illusion of learning without the reality of experience. It makes us feel informed while leaving us empty.
Passive Consumption Is the Death of Memory
Ever scrolled for hours and realized you remember none of it?
That’s because your brain doesn’t care about things you don’t actively engage with. It’s like eating junk food—you’re full, but you’re not nourished.
I’ve wasted entire nights on social media, taking in post after post, meme after meme, video after video. And then I shut my laptop, and it’s like it never happened.
But I can tell you every detail about the time my friend and I spent a night at an empty beach, watching the waves roll in, talking about everything and nothing.
We remember what we live. Not what we consume.
Even Remote Work Is Only Memorable Because of What It Enables
I work remotely. I love it. I answer emails in my underwear. Life is good.
But the work itself? Not memorable. The emails? The Slack messages? The Zoom calls? They all blend together into one long, blurry timeline.
What I do remember is the first time I used that remote freedom to book a flight.
The time I took my laptop to a café in a new city and worked while sipping a coffee that cost too much. The time I finally met a coworker in real life, and we laughed about how different we looked outside of a tiny Zoom box.
The job itself didn’t stick. The moments it created did.
Digital Ghosts and the Loneliness of the Online World
Kant had this idea of phenomena—the things we can experience—and noumena—the things beyond our grasp.
The internet is full of people who feel like phenomena but turn out to be noumena.
You can talk to someone every day online, but if you’ve never seen their face in real life, heard their laugh in person, or sat next to them in silence, do they truly exist in your world?
Or are they just part of the endless scroll?
What We Think We’ll Remember vs. What We Actually Will
We think we’ll remember the clever tweet. The viral video. The latest controversy. But we won’t.
We’ll remember the time we almost missed the last train home and had to sprint through the station.
The night we stayed up until dawn talking about dreams we’d never chase.
The song that played at just the right moment on a road trip, turning a stretch of empty highway into something sacred.
The internet is loud, but real life has weight.
The Internet is a Fast-Food Buffet for the Mind
Kant would have hated the internet. Not because it’s bad, but because it tricks us into thinking we’re experiencing life when we’re really just grazing on endless, forgettable content.
Real memories don’t come from seeing or reading.
They come from doing. You don’t remember the movie you streamed last Tuesday.
But you remember the time you watched a terrible film with friends and threw popcorn at the screen.
The internet alone? It’s just noise.
Experience? That’s where life actually happens.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to go outside and touch some grass.
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