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Quevedo, Yazmin

Professor Phillips

ENG 105

12 October 2020

My assignment 2 was 3.
It is Dangerous to use the Internet
​(Inspired by Margaret Atwood’s “It’s Dangerous to Read Newspapers”​)

Before the Internet, you’d set an army of action figures, hidden in the backyard that you

transformed into a jungle of Bodhi trees and battlegrounds with trenches. There were no buttons

to make the soldiers yell “duck!” or a portal where friends could join the battlefield from their

own backyards, so you yelled “Sir Yes Sir”, voiced every single soldier, and stationed your

troops before the enemy that was your ferocious labradoodle. Your hunger for an innocent battle

stemmed from the whimsical “Duck and Cover” commercials and the courageous war stories

your father described after every brunch. The next day, you’d repeat the very same routine,

losing yourself in striking imaginations. However, if it was too hot of a day, you might just lay

on the bed instead, gazing at the rustic helicopter that fanned you with a tranquil breeze. You

would focus on the squeaking bolts of the fan or the squeals of the boiling pot, trying to envision

them as a band’s drumline. All-day, you blissfully imagined a world in which you were in the

front lines of battles and marches.

Before the Internet, you would spend countless scorching summer afternoons sitting

indoors, wondering what to do with your three months of freedom. You would make tunes to the
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clinking of your mother’s wine bottles and learn to admire the fictitious silence - the blissful

peace from the static radio and its rhythm that hinted hymns of Woody Guthrie. If lucky, a rustic

Wurlitzer piano might appear in your living room, and your father might say “play something

from Louis Armstrong!”. Learning to play the piano that sweltering summer, you had all the time

in the world to memorize every tune of his. Your eyes widened as each vibrant key detonated

chimed fireworks miles and miles overseas, and every intentional halt was a moment of gasp as

one awaited the coming shower of sparking fire.

Before the Internet, you’d lay on the porch swing, watching cars drive by, dozing off to

the white noise of the engine and tires. The gray smoke glistened to the sky to dance with

afternoon sun-rays, and the air had the subtle hint of smokey wood from the fiery everglades

only an hour away.

Before the Internet, we spent our innocent Sunday mass in luscious dresses and suits,

clueless about our brothers and sisters on the other side of our world, who started their morning

at sweatshops to make these very pastel ruffles and floral skirts we frolicked around in.

Before the Internet, you’d listen to Talking Heads on your vinyl records and fight to

revolt against your composed, small-town shackles. Your city was no longer big enough for your

adventures and curiosity; it was, instead, a prison cell to your running imagination.

Before the Internet, your day was bright and jejune, but the outside of such a perfect

world was misty and distant from thoughts. You lived in the eye of the hurricane, in harmony as

your neighbors searched for shelter. Yet, you gradually sensed the rumble and CRASH on other

lands.
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As we approached the Internet, you awoke to the “Crisis of Confidence”, questioning the

intangible emotion of joy and your supposed need for the object across the living room. Had the

wireless suburbia confined us in materialism? What was on the other side of white picket fence?

Now, your such fictitious peace disintegrated before you.

As we approached the Internet, you turned on the TV to learn that every innocent step on

a crack was a palm tree, silently falling to the feet of wealthy corporations. Every frivolous

shopping spree condoned the stripping of quality life from sweatshop workers in distant worlds

from yours.

As we approached the Internet, the battles between your action figures now became a

reality in your world. Every rubber soldier lost to your labradoodle was an innocent pon

sacrificed for imperialism’s avarice. We couldn’t hear the anguish from our soldiers until the

New York streets begged for their lives with riveting marches and John Lennon’s “Give Peace a

Chance”.

It is dangerous to use the Internet.

Your bubble of utter joy and harmony could weaken. The wall separating one’s suburban

bliss from world tragedies may crumble. The sweet scent of smokey wood may never invoke

nostalgia again, but fear for your land.

Yet, to use the Internet allows you to be in the front-line of our war. To use the Internet

provides the means to be a soldier of a new kind. This new soldier is the enemy of ignorance;

they battle the exploitation overseas or the systemic chains in one’s own city.

Now, with the Internet, we can fight the war in our very own backyards.
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