Living up to the name of this blog

It's amazing the type of power trip the internet can give you. I'm a not-particularly-remarkable 21-year-old sitting in a $25 desk chair at an IKEA desk in my room on the fifth floor of a rather decrepit apartment building in Montreal, surrounded by empty coffee mugs and the other standard detritus of an unclean desk: pens, headphones, checkbooks, notebooks, textbooks, and book books. Far from a glamorous life--yet my chair can feel for all the world like a golden throne, and my desk like a...well, golden desk. Of state. Or something.

I sit here, writing what I hope are entertaining musings on the world with the vague illusion that I'm disseminating my wisdom to the masses. And although I'm no Andrew Sullivan, and I don't have millions waiting on my next word, I still know that there's a small group of people--on the other side of this city, on the other side of this world--that actually reads this and gets something from it. I don't know what, but it's something. Facebook is even worse. I can make a joke about Freud in my status and people will read it. Lots of people. I can choose to engage with them, or I can sit back and stay removed from my subjects.

I am far from the first person to point this out, but for some reason it hit me on a gut level this morning. This is so damn dangerous. Yes, Facebook and blogging and all this other nifty internet stuff allows us to connect with people, but what kind of connection is it? We're all becoming monarchs of our own tiny, private realms. Or maybe that's just me--but I am definitely not the only person in the world with an egotistical bent.