What I have to Offer from Eliot Rausch on Vimeo.

Charlie Kaufman's full lecture can be found here.

I saw something the other day that basically asked, why are you giving your life to Facebook? You're filling a site that's not your own with your stories, when they belong on your own domain. Facebook is making millions off your content, so consider what you're giving up for the opportunity to have a few dozen people give you a digital thumbs up.

This really resonated with me, especially after I posted the above video on Facebook this morning and only one person said HOLY SHIT THIS IS AMAZING and shared it on her own page. It could be that I've neglected this site long enough that I only get a couple hundred people to read it anyway, down from a peak of about 4,000 a day way back when. People say Twitter killed blogging, and it certainly drained some of the energy out of it, but Facebook has made blogging seem old-fashioned and quaint, almost hand-made. In 2001 I had to read a Webmonkey tutorial to learn how to make a hyperlink; building my own domain was an accomplishment akin to learning how to make sushi. And not everybody wanted (or had the time and resources) to do that before Facebook, so I can see how democratizing Facebook is, it gives anyone over the age of 13 a place to post nuanced political rants and cat photos in less than 60 seconds.

But I'm cranky enough to want to take my Internet life back to its original platform. It could be this feeling will pass -- God knows I've had some mood swings lately, tomorrow I may be running for office (I had a dream last night that Barack Obama hugged me). But I've been feeling a lack of meaning in my life for a couple of years now, and it's become so acute that keeping it inside is no longer an option. Sorry, Internet. I'm back.