24 Hours Without Wifi

As everyone probably knows, hurricane Irma has been barreling through America all weekend. Thousands of Floridans has to evacuate and 60% of Florida was left without electricity. Here in Athens, the storm wasn't nearly as bad. There was heavy rain and wind all day Monday, but that was about it. Nothing we couldn't handle- until the power went out. Now I've been in a power outage before and it's really not bad if its only out for an hour or so, but the power was out at my house for an entire day. Our phones and laptops slowly died throughout the extent of the day and we found ourselves sitting in our living room, without any technology, surrounded by candles, bored as shit. The amount of times we mistakenly thought we could just turn on the Apple TV and use an HDMI cord to watch a movie that was already downloaded on our laptops was embarrassing.

It was weird actually not having Wifi for an entire day. I've done a "social media cleanse" before, but I always use the internet. Basically everything I do is on the internet, and I want to say that the 24 hour break from it was nice because I feel like its the "right thing to say", but honestly it wasn't nice at all. One of my more self-righteous friends kept saying "isn't this so fun not having any technology and just getting to sit and hangout and talk to each other without phones?", but no it was not fun. Not that I don't love hanging out an talking with my friends, I can and do do that all the time, but not having access to something that we always have access to was just annoying. We have gotten to a point where the internet is just another thing, like a shower or a couch. It's something we need and something we don't even notice we are using. That's why it's so easy to sit and have a conversation with a friend while simultaneously using the web and discussing things from the social web. The internet and social is just a part of daily human activity now and while there are some negative side effects, I think if you use it to engage and participate, it isn't really something to be ashamed of.

Comments

  1. UnknownSeptember 12, 2017 at 11:10 AM

    This post is extremely interesting because of all the events revolving around Hurricane Irma and because Georgia has never really experience a storm this severe. I also found myself really wondering what I would do to entertain myself if there was a power outage! I ended up buying a ton of magazines to try and help entertain myself if I lost power. I'm sorry that you had to go an entire day without power. It's crazy how lost we feel when we are without power and especially the internet.

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  2. UnknownSeptember 12, 2017 at 11:34 AM

    Very interesting topic! I wrote something similar to this power outage. It has been a pain for me since I am supposed to take 3 exams this Wednesday and all the course materials are online. The only connection to the outside world was my cellphone but it slowly died; it was actually really fast. It was definitely hard to stay in the dark without any power and internet connection, and I think this shows how we are so dependent on the internet. Great post!

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