We are not alone. Unless you never click "publish," then who knows?

The following is a post from 3/11 that I never finished; I saved the draft, intending to finish it, but it lost momentum and the thoughts scattered from entropy and ennui.

But if I never published it, did it ever really exist?

**
I worry about virtual myself. I think he's getting too uppity. The virtual me says, "Go blog something because you're so clever and everybody loves you." And sometime the real me believes. Because the virtual me is so powerful.

I'm a god in the virtual world. Computers allow me to alter my identity, influence others and kill ogres. But there's more. I saw this love letter to Wikipedia and it seemed to reveal this insight:

BED BUGS MOTHER FUCKER THEY GON GET YO MOTHA FUCKING ASS BRAAAAAAAT FOOL BRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAP.

But that's not the important part, and neither is this:

A piece of antivandalism software, VoABot II, reverted that edit, with a little sigh, less than a minute after it was made.

The important part is that the "bed bugs" message still exists. It was deleted, but it's returned from the dead, as fresh as the moment it was posted. I think we love the Internet because we can pretend we are gods. We are omnipresent; we are eternal; we are omniscient. Thanks to Internet Explorer, we are rarely omnipotent, but you get the idea.

We, meaning each person, not just a King or Emperor, have more power to communicate and influence than any time previous.

But it's not real. I think people instinctively know that what we do online isn't real. Like the Suze Orman book you could download in electronic format for free; one million copies were nabbed, but that didn't stop people from buying the print edition. Electrons, fake; book, real.

But the Internet is so comforting, so easy to control. The only weakness is the receiver, the disciple. If only we could make him believe.