Fear and Loathing on the Internet

by A. E. O'Neill

[Originally published August 27, 1999]

Let's talk irrational fears. Every time I'm in a tanning bed, I have this paranoid fantasy that there will be an earthquake and I'll have to recognize it in time to leap out and not be crushed in a lightbulb-lined death-trap. Perhaps this crosses into the "ironic fears" category as well, because I don't actually fear the tanning bed itself even though to enter it, I must casually disregard the dire warnings and manufacturer disclaimers papering it's gleaming, coffin-like exterior.

Another victim of irrational fear is my grandmother, who will never see the gorgeous view from my apartment due to her terror of airplanes and elevators. She, in turn, is convinced that I'm afraid of pen and paper. This is actually somewhat true, considering that years on a keyboard have left me with the manual dexterity required to fill a page no larger than a Post-it note.

Irrational fears, I think, are one of the driving forces on the Internet.

From conspiracy theories to urban legends, there is a site for every phobia. If there's anything that has caused you to lose a night or even a moment of sleep, I guarantee you, some guy has created an e-shrine to it.

All those free and virtually anonymous email providers exist to ensure that travelers and students can check their correspondence from the anywhere in the world, right? Right. We all know they exist to provide an untraceable outlet for our private conversations so we don't go mad imagining how easily our personal lives could be read through legitimate accounts by complete strangers - or bosses or spouses or parents (oh my).

Y2K hysteria, which has degraded, mercifully, into insipid ad-hype ("Yes to KIA!") and the ramblings of ineffectual religious leaders, has provided a cornerstone for the FAQ area on most corporate sites. A page or entire section on sites for such institutions as elevator manufacturers and power companies is now devoted to reassuring the public that company.com is fully prepared and armed to meet the new millennium - the funny thing is that for most average users, these detailed protestations of compliance probably do more to create fears than allay them (hmm, I never thought about that possible catastrophe before, thinks Joe User, maybe I'll stash my cash under the mattress after all).

So, while fear.com is currently running a soon-to-be-outdated teaser promising content in "mid-summer '99", and the clever owners of conspiracy.com are running a black page with the depressingly predictable title "There is Nothing Here," you may be tempted to think that the reign of paranoia on the Internet is in it's pitiful autumn phase, giving way to e-commerce and auction houses.

But I say fear is alive and well online, just wearing a cheap suit instead of a cloak and sickle.

We are, after all, on the downsweep of the year that Nostradamus predicted "The great King of Terror will come from the sky," (we're a month past the estimated time of arrival, by the way), and the millennium isn't over till... well, you know.

It's also worth noting that all the aforementioned is much scarier than The Blair Witch Project, which employed some of the most creative and subversive marketing tactics this TV-crazed media junkie has ever encountered, but which, at the end of it's unbearably boring 87 minutes, was less chill-inducing than the not-quite-butter/not-quite-hand-lotion flavored popcorn that kept falling into my lap as my jaw dropped in disbelief at the wonders created not by special effects or even directorial talent, but by hype alone.