Shutting Down The Internet, At Least For Occasional Five-Minute Intervals

By Will Leitch, 12:45 PM on Tue May 5 2009, 43,827 views

This is a weekly column from Leitch. It has words, and pictures. It's called Ten Humans Of The Week.

I'm about to hunker down in the bunker for the next book -- out next Father's Day! If I finish in time! -- so I'm trying to wean myself off excess, unnecessary Web usage. This used to be less difficult: I'd read Gawker and Slate and Baseball Prospectus a little less, maybe start doing more work on my old computer that doesn't connect to the Web. (This only goes so far: When you're writing something that big, you'll find any way you can to distract yourself. I found myself playing with that non-Web computer's internal clock. "I wonder what time it is in Monaco right now!")

Now, of course, there's a lot more to shut down from. There's my Twitter, there's my Tumblr, there's something called Foursquare, which I use for absolutely no reason at all. (I don't even like it, and its format -- telling your friends what bars you're at when you arrive -- is literally the opposite of the way I live my life. And still: I feel compelled to be on.) Realize, we are just about a year away, tops, from someone writing one of those gimmick books about staying away from the Internet for six months and seeing what happens, like that couple that had sex every day for a year or that guy who tried to live for a few months as if he were a Civil War general. (He must have been very hot.) It's going to be so much harder than it was the last time I slowed the Web usage for to work on a book, two years ago. I have a fear people will forget I'm alive. Not that being aware of it now is providing them much all that interesting.

(Thanks to Gourmet Spud, by the way, for filling in last week. Unfortunately, he ignored my pleas and wrote something much funnier than what you're about to read.)

(Oh, and I am absolutely not ready to talk about Ankiel yet. I hope you understand.)