Ich werde ein Berliner

The German people’s relationship with the internet has always been a conflicted one. Even though no German person of the right type would ever describe themselves as conservative, once there’s too much change in too little time, like the paradigm shift the internet has brought to media consumption, then that kind of change will freak German people out.

That’s why, up to until recently, the Germans preferred to use the internet more like a new channel on their television sets, and accordingly, most German websites consisted of gratuitous “Flash” animations of flying type and logos to a backdrop of futuristic, bleepy electronica. The major goal of creating a website for German people was to get the design right, down to the single pixel, until it was a match for the static dullness of a lifestyle mag.

With the advent of social networks, Germans eventually got bored with watching animated type flying towards them, and their internet use finally picked up steam. Soon, they were using Google, MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter like everyone else. If one can trust the ads, German people are nowadays able to relax and use the internet the way it was meant to: Lying on an IKEA rug in their sanierte Altbau apartment, on their stomachs, with a Laptop in front of them, having a Latte Macchiato that has a cute cocoa heart on top of the milk froth, with a dementedly smug smile on their faces caused by all that sweet convenience the internet brings to their lives.

As it was established before, German people quickly feel uncomfortable when there is nothing to be offended or worried about. If they currently have no personal reason to be offended or worried about anything, they will go to a bookstore to buy a book written by what they consider to be a much more intelligent person, who happens to be altruistic and kind enough to lecture them about recent developments that they should better be offended or worried about, and that person, more often than not, is Frank Schirrmacher.

Frank Schirrmacher is a weathered journalist, essayist, and co-publisher of Germany’s well read Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper, who recently has made himself a name to be the go-to guy if you’re in need for a bestselling book in the ubersuccessful German literary genre named Betroffenheitsliteratur. Because of his impeccable approach to journalism, Frank Schirrmacher won’t simply publish whatever confused, based-on-false-premises theory comes to his mind, but also go to great lengths to support that confused, based-on-false-premises theory by quoting from an endless stream of stark statistics and studies he researched.

His latest book, which is likely to become another bestseller, deals with the dangers of the internet. To Frank, the internet is at least 99% bad and a health risk for those little neurons who live inside that spongey stuff inside your skull called brain, so he highly recommends to go buy his book and read that until your brain turns numb from all the dull statistics and references to obscure studies. Admittedly, that will save you from having your brain turned into elephant poo by the internet because you can have a really, really intellectual German person do it for you instead. It’s the same tactical approach to health as cutting off your hand to keep your fingernails from growing.

Granted, asking a middle-aged newspaper publisher to teach you about the dangers of the internet is a bit like hiring Silvio Berlusconi as an Au Pair to watch over your teenage daughter when you’re absent. But let’s give him the benefit of doubt and look at some of Frank Schirrmacher’s key theses:

1. The internet will turn a person’s brain into a messy puddle of grey goo. It could be argued that the human brain, in terms of texture, isn’t too far away from being a ball of grey, gooey mud anyway, but while definitely not the first person to warn humankind of the grey goo problem, Frank Schirrmacher is the first person to cleverly mash it up with another beloved theory of German people: Health-related esotericism. But fear not, just wear the free, foldable tin foil hat you can find in tomorrow’s issue of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
2. Google’s robots will soon know everything you think, say, and do, and will someday use this knowledge to your disadvantage. He might be on to something here. How so? Well, haven’t you seen Forbidden Planet? Man, that Robby The Robot dude sure f@#!d things up in the end, right? You know, that part when he didn’t shoot the monster because he was all like, “beep beep, error error, I was programmed not to shoot humans,” because, somehow, he didn’t have his Google sorted out, and therefore, with his big, stupid lightbulb-for-a-brain brain, figured that the monster was part human, so he wasn’t allowed to shoot it, which caused, like, real harm to his human space friends? See, that’s what happens once you trust those damn robots.
3. Some evil, all-encompassing internet entity, probably Google, is hard at work collecting all information about you (yes, especially you), which, any given day now, will enable a big German news website to have ads that are, by the wonders of cutting edge computer technology, targeted to specific demographics, like 25 year olds. Isn’t that shocking? The 90s called, they want their technology-related Big Brother doomsday scenarios back. Fortunately, due to the alertness of its co-publisher Frank Schirrmacher, there still is a news website that is definitely free of such tricky, targeted advertising, or, for that matter, any competitive or up-to-date content at all: His newspaper’s online version, found at www.faz.net.
4. The ubiquity of Email, SMSs (sic), Facebook and “Tweeds” will inevitability lead to the complete loss of your attention span, and skill to concentrate. Yep. He literally used the word “Tweeds”. Repeatedly. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you can get over that show stopper, or rather wrap the book up at the first occurrence of “Tweeds” and send it back to Amazon. You know, they have that no-questions-asked money-back guarantee.

Apparently, looking to middle aged men working in the old school media who’re afraid of losing their status won’t be of much help to a person who is desperate to get a grasp on this mysterious network of computers called The Internet people have lately started talking about so much. If only there was a person in Germany who Germans could accept as the real internet pundit. You know, someone who is exactly as freaky, ke-razy and edgy as this new internet thing itself, and not afraid to show that edginess, craziness, and aversion to anything mainstream by sporting a pretentious hairstyle. You know, like, like…yeah, that’s it: A mohawk. If you see such a person, make him the figurehead of the German Internet User Club and follow him blindly, never questioning his expertise. Your concept of the internet will then, and only then, be in sync with that of a German person.