Poor Mojo's Newswire

In fact, most things I was learning could be realized with or without an internet connection — you don't need to go on a yearlong internet fast to realize your sister has feelings. But one big change was snail mail. I got a PO Box this year, and I can't tell you how much of a joy it was to see the box stuffed with letters from readers. It's something tangible, and something hard to simulate with an e-card. In neatly spaced, precisely adorable lettering, one girl wrote on a physical piece of paper: "Thank you for leaving the internet." Not as an insult, but as a compliment. That letter meant the world to me. But then I felt bad, because I never wrote back. And then, for some reason, even going to the post office sounded like work. I began to dread the letters and almost resent them. As it turned out, a dozen letters a week could prove to be as overwhelming as a hundred emails a day. And that was the way it went in most aspects of my life. A good book took motivation to read, whether I had the internet as an alternative or not. Leaving the house to hang out with people took just as much courage as it ever did. By late 2012, I'd learned how to make a new style of wrong choices off the internet. I abandoned my positive offline habits, and discovered new offline vices. Instead of taking boredom and lack of stimulation and turning them into learning and creativity, I turned toward passive consumption and social retreat. A year in, I don't ride my bike so much. My frisbee gathers dust. Most weeks I don't go out with people even once. My favorite place is the couch. I prop my feet up on the coffee table, play a video game, and listen to an audiobook. I pick a mindless game, like Borderlands 2 or Skate 3, and absently thumb the sticks through the game-world while my mind rests on the audiobook, or maybe just on nothing.

Twitter sent a memo to news organizations (before you ask, no, The Appeal didn’t get one) detailing ways these publications can protect their accounts, some of which don’t seem completely practical. For example, the memo suggests using only one computer for the publication’s Twitter account, a computer that won’t be used for surfing the web or checking email. From the memo: Designate one computer to use for Twitter. This helps keep your Twitter password from being spread around. Don’t use this computer to read email or surf the web, to reduce the chances of malware infection. So, a dedicated Twitter device? Too bad Peek kicked the bucket!