I really believed that anything at all was worth writing about if you cared about it enough, and that the best and only necessary justification for writing any particular story was that I cared about it.
Susan OrleanRead
Sometimes, the Internet can feel like a middle-school playground populated by brats in ski masks who name-call and taunt with the fake bravery of the anonymous. But sometimes - thank goodness - it's nicer than real life.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The Internet can be a hostile environment, but it also offers a sense of community that's often better than real life.
In this quote, Susan Orlean captures the dual nature of the Internet. While it can sometimes resemble a chaotic playground filled with anonymous cruelty, it also provides spaces for genuine connection and kindness, which can surpass the complexities and harsh realities of offline interactions.
Themes
InternetCommunityAnonymityConnectionLife
In practice
Example use cases
During a speech about online safety, this quote highlights the importance of understanding the online environment.
More from Susan Orlean
All quotes →You have to appreciate the spiritual component of having an opportunity to do something as wondrous as writing. You should be practical and smart and you should have a good agent and you should work really, really hard. But you should also be filled with awe and gratitude about this amazing way to be in the world.
Susan OrleanRead
I suppose I do have one embarrassing passion- I want to know what it feels like to care about something passionately.
Susan OrleanRead
I remember three- and four-week-long snow days, and drifts so deep a small child, namely me, could get lost in them. No such winter exists in the record, but that's how Ohio winters seemed to me when I was little - silent, silver, endless, and dreamy.
Susan OrleanRead
There's a marvelous sense of mastery that comes with writing a sentence that sounds exactly as you want it to. It's like trying to write a song, making tiny tweaks, reading it out loud, shifting things to make it sound a certain way... Sometimes it feels like digging out of a hole, but sometimes it feels like flying. When it's working and the rhythm's there, it does feel like magic to me.
Susan OrleanRead
I never thought very many people in the world were very much like John Laroche, but I realized more and more that he was only an extreme, not an aberration - that most people in some way or another do strive for something exceptional, something to pursue, even at their peril, rather than abide an ordinary life.
Susan OrleanRead
Similar quotes
People thought I was crazy thinking about a phone you can just put in your pocket.
Martin CooperRead
On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.
Stewart BrandRead
We're all vulnerable to social approval. The need to belong, to be approved or appreciated by our peers is among the highest human motivations. But now our social approval is in the hands of tech companies.
Tristan HarrisRead
As we move into an era in which personal devices are seen as proxies for public needs, we run the risk that already-existing inequities will be further entrenched. Thus, with every big data set, we need to ask which people are excluded. Which places are less visible? What happens if you live in the shadow of big data sets?
Kate CrawfordRead
The one thing perhaps that technology hasn't always given us is a sense of how to make the wisest use of technology.
Pico IyerRead
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
Alan WattsRead