seeking something like salvation on the Internet
fourteen actual searches I’ve typed into Google this year
I have a toxic habit. When I’m feeling yuck, emotionally-speaking, I flop down on my bed, organize my neck into a uncomfortable position, and open Google. It’s understandable to turn to Google with queries like
royal blue vintage coveralls ebay(still searching), or
why does my neck hurt (same). But when Google catches me on a bad day … it’s a different ballgame entirely.
the addictive rabbithole of Googling alone
I start by entering the “problem” I’m having into the search bar:
what to do when you’re feeling anxiousIt’s almost sweet, like I believe the Internet is a kind, loving, smart human with all the context about my current moment and a major stake in my happiness, instead of an amalgam of bots writing clickbait headlines that brands can advertise mattresses against. The worse I’m feeling, the more inane my phrasing becomes:
how to survive parenting two under two when you’re sick how to not look like a momwhat to do if you just threw a tantrumgender essentialism badBecause this is what Google was built to do, it gives me a list of results, and I, treating Google like the trusted advisor I’m desperate for it to be, proceed to open like 8 tabs and then read each one, all the while thinking ok that Psychology Today article was pretty stupid but THIS ONE from lifehacks4u.biz probably has the secret key to solving not just this problem but probably actually all my future problems!!!
I know it’s getting bad when the results come exclusively from reddit or quora, where other people just as desperate as I am were at least resolute enough to say F it, I’m asking the Internet! Too terrified to cross into the reddit rubicon but still jonesing for answers, I start frantically searching the archives of writers I admire, mining their past work for an essay on perhaps the exact emotional conundrum I’m trying to Google my way out of (jackpot), or if not, an essay written specifically to distract me from the existential malaise I’m feeling from trying to solve my psychological chaos with Google (also jackpot).
Two hours and six minutes later, I’m feeling more strung out than when I started. Cue Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban on Audible1, where I can disappear into a world where Google does not exist. Depending on how long I spent Googling, I wake up the next morning with a mild shame hangover.
Cut to: me, the following week, lying in bed with requisite crooked neck, back on my bullshit. It’s like I have a so-obviously-impossible-that-it-just-might-be-possible fantasy that there’s a real person sitting on the other side of screen, watching my searches roll in, waiting until just the right moment to call me and say hello ma’am, we’ve just seen the following come in on your Search logs …
dealing with toddler separation anxietydealing with toddler separation anxiety but for the parent did I just fall for jury duty failure to appear scamwhat to do when you’re trying but you still suckwhat to do with a strong inner criticwhats a chile relleno… are you … ok? Can we send a pizza? (Or a chile relleno …?)2
The obvious truth is that this mostly innocuous—but also mildly unhinged—Googling habit of mine is really just a bid for connection; a call into the void for evidence that someone else out there has experienced what I’m experiencing, and survived it. But it’s also notable that even in the best-case outcome from this cursed ritual, wherein I (for example) discover a sublime essay from
at the very moment I need it most, I’m still left feeling hollow. Why? And why, then, do I continue to do it?The investigation leads to a bigger question, one that everyone seems to be asking but to which no one has found a satisfying answer: why does connection—even when that connection is genuine—feel less good when mediated by technology?
AI friends and the uncanny valley
While we can all agree that connection, broadly speaking, is very clearly good, we can also say with certainty that the warped, ever-present “connectivity” afforded by our Internet-enabled lives often feels … bad. Meanwhile, it’s roundly clear that having a real-life conversation is often all it takes to pull ourselves out of a spell of despair.
But that hasn’t stopped more than one company (like this one, and this one) from capitalizing on our lack and attempting to fill our desire for connection with technology anyway—specifically in the form of AI friends. This feels instructive when trying to answer the question of why technology-mediated connection feels worse than the real thing:
By delivering a compelling facsimile of a conversational companion that isn’t quite the real thing, AI companions are pinnacle uncanny valley, the now-familiar concept first described by robotics professor Masahiro Mori to describe an “eerie or unsettling feeling that people experience in response to not-quite-human figures.”
In other words, it just feels … off. Whether you know this because you’re conversant with AI yourself or just have enough cultural context to remember the plot of Her, uncanny valley helps explain with logic why the idea of turning to an AI to cure your loneliness feels intuitively spooky. But I’m not sure this entirely explains the hollowness I feel after my Google binges (which, after all, isn’t enough to turn me away from them).
turning toward holiness
Though they begin with a different premise entirely, Jia Tolentino and Ezra Klein arrive at an adjacent question in their podcast discussion On Children, Meaning, Media and Psychadelics: what role does technology play—particularly that type of mind-numbing, escapist screen time—in our search for pleasure, meaning, and even the sacred?
In their conversation, Jia describes the relatable impulse to “leap out of the texture of the present,” either because of boredom, or discomfort, or both. It’s a frequent experience in parenting (how many more times can we play sock blast-off before my arm just stops being able to throw socks?!), but one that is also periodically present in simply being alive. As Ezra puts it: “you are doing the most meaningful thing, and you are so bored or so tired, or you so want to be somewhere else. What do you do when what you’re trying to do is escape the thing you should be paying attention to?”
Here’s Jia, in response:
I think back to when I was little, and I would read books while I was on roller skates. I don’t think that the quality of wanting to leap out of the texture of the present is something that’s specific to the smartphone era. I remember I read in the bathtub … you memorized the shampoo bottles. You’re always kind of looking for a narrative to take you out of the present.
This is, of course, exactly what I’m doing when I’m sitting in bed, Googling for answers. She goes on:
But I do think that the way that the smartphone has sort of deformed and put that desire quivering in our pockets, beckoning to us … [sometimes I would] think something. And I would have this sense of, this is an idea that is shimmering with movement, in some way, you know? And then it would be too much for me. And then I would be like, I can’t. I can’t deal with it. [...]
And it sometimes feels to me not that we’re turning away from the mess and the wonder of real physical experience, despite the fact that it’s precious. I kind of feel something within me sometimes that it’s too precious. It’s too much, that being present is work, in a way.”
What she seems to be saying is that real, physical experience (versus one mediated through technology), particularly one that involves another person, requires something of us—that it has stakes. Being in relationship with someone requires a willingness to be bored; to hear something you didn’t particularly want to hear and to keep listening anyway. To show up through the discomfort.
And because of this, the very qualities that make reality tedious, uncomfortable, messy, are the same ones that make them transcendent.
There is something holy about the stakes required to enter into real relationship; to care and be cared for. Stakes that simply aren’t there when I route my innermost questions to Google instead.
As I approached the end of my Google Search history, I saw this:
why does discomfort feel goodI don’t know if I have the answer, but maybe just asking the question—acknowledging its truth—represents progress. I’ll probably keep turning to Google for my chile-relleno-adjacent questions. But I’ll at least notice when I Google in order to turn away from the ache of the present, and seek to turn toward its holiness instead.
Thanks for reading! I of course want to know what, these days, is feeling holy to you, a question3 to tuck away and revisit often.
Did almost fall for a jury duty failure to appear scam! Inquire within for details
Thank you to my brilliant friend Megan Grennan for this question, which inspired much of today’s essay 💓