Computers are Bad

Okay, time for geek week backlash. My previous posting was the RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) bracelet made from computer keys and today I do NECKPAIN. Because computers are bad for you in so many ways! The Luddites knew what they were doing when they took hammers to the machines of the Industrial Revolution and now we must enact the final solution.

Here are some of the different ways that homo geekiens have managed their computer rage from a survey by University of Maryland where they research all the important stuff. Click here for full list.

• I name my computers, and I use their names pretty much only when I'm mad at them. When my old computer, Charles, use to be bad..I'd yell, but then I tried giving him hugs instead..

• I scream at my computer because I know that it hears me and is laughing at me.

• Pull the plug instead of going through shutdown or report this error to Microsoft.

• I tend to bang on the keyboard harder when I get frustrated but not to the point of breaking it. I don't curse at the computer but do say harsh words to it occasionally.

• I take frustration out by yelling foobar outloud as i don't want to damage expensive hardware. I also tell everyone around me how evil my computer/ the technology was.

• I've never hit a computer screen hard enough to break it, but this week I hit my car windshield and cracked it. Maybe I should find a road rage survey.

• I often show my PC the middle finger!

• I sometimes put my Hands around my monitor's "neck"

etc etc, very funny...University of Maryland seems to have an entire faculty devoted to the study of Computer Rage and you can visit this site to find safe and cathartic ways of venting like the recommended mouse torture pictured at left.

I have often come close to some of these behaviours whilst editing the jewellers and metalsmiths A5 booklet quarterly newsletter but never whilst blogging. Blogging is good. Nothing bad has happened to me while blogging...yet. Any rage against computers comes out of me in the way I meticulously take apart computer bits and reconstruct them into delicate pieces of jewellery.

Seriously but. They have improved a bit over the last 20 years. I remember back in the bad old days of the early 90s I sharehoused with a systems analyst who would return home from a 90 hour week sporting monitor burns all over his face and looking like Michael Gambon in The Singing Detective. We didn't have much sympathy for him though as he was earning more in a couple of hours than we earned in the whole week as underemployed artists!

But maybe we are getting more intolerant of computers. We should be more in control of negative emotion. My theory is the more disposed you are towards inflicting violence on a computer, the more likely you are to inflict it on a living creature. Like those studies on domestic violence survivors whose pets have also been at the receiving end of violence before and while the interhuman abuse got really bad. Anyway, food for thought. If you are going to enact violence or nasty words on anything, think of how it might effect those around you first. Have a laugh at yourself instead! And do it for the sheer joy of destruction, not out of hate!

Don't forget, Junk IT starts this friday!