The Internet Has Overstayed Its Welcome
The online world has become something negative and I'm done with that crap.
Greetings. I’m professor Michael Wingert (more on me below). There might be a better idiom to use when describing the internet, but this is how I’m feeling about it at present. I’ve decided to reformat my presence on the internet. I was there in the 90s when the BBS system shifted over to dialup and broadband internet access (the 2400 baud modems were amazing) and the world began connecting at the popular level. The World Wide Web (I don’t even think this new generation knows what the “www” stands for fronting URLs) has been a great benefit to human civilization by democratizing information and connecting the world in ways that were considered science-fiction when I was growing up. While the net is a fantastic and [nearly] indispensable resource, it is also a place where social media displays our deep pessimism aligned with low self-worth to produce faceless, text-based negative communication that is wildly reshaping our relationships with one another. I have accounts on most traditional social media platforms, though I no longer use or operate the major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. Moreover, I’ve assigned others to access and administer most of my accounts. I’m also present on Parler (at one time the best for community building, but Parler’s reorganization really set them back substantially—a post for another time), Gab (the best for free speech—lots of bots and idiots [some who are paid] to post garbage to lower the brand of Gab as a real competitor to Facebook and Twitter), and Gettr. On these alternative platforms you can find me linking to interesting articles. For video, I’m on YouTube, Vimeo, and Rumble. More on all these platforms in a future post.
I don’t need a smart phone—a mildly competent phone will suffice. I don’t need applications tracking me or feeding all my data into some cloud repository in the event of… well whatever some potential bad actor wants to do with any information about me. I’ve always been somewhat of an open book; I don’t really have any secrets and I’ve shared my heart with whomever may benefit from such a conversation with me. Let me give freely, don’t take information about me.
All that said, I think there are positive ways of communicating in the digital world. Substack is one of them, so I will be locating most of what I have to say here. As for me, I’m just a nerd who likes learning things. I’m a professor and dean at Agora University, in addition to a number of other appointments that I take at other institutions.
Below is my online academic bio:
Dr. Wingert’s research focuses on ancient medicine, Semitic scriptural literature, the linguistic and philological background to Semitic languages in contact with neighboring speech communities, Northwest Semitic epigraphy, the philosophy of language, and ancient Near Eastern religions. At UCLA, Wingert developed a course for undergraduate students on the origins of medicine based on ancient Assyro-Babylonian and Egyptian medicine. Additionally, he was the lead research assistant on the Sinai Palimpsests Project for the UCLA Digital Library’s partnership with the Early Manuscript Electronic Library, a project that digitizes and recovers the washed away texts from the library of St. Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai of Egypt. At Agora University, Wingert teaches Introduction to the Old Testament, Suffering and the Scriptures, Healing and the Word, and electives in Syriac studies. In addition to his appointment at Agora, Wingert serves on the Syriac Orthodox Patriarchal committee for missions and has previously served on the advisory board for the Assyrian Arts Institute. He speaks Sureth (known by scholars as Northeastern Neo-Aramaic) with his family and is an advocate for the preservation of indigenous languages and cultures in the Middle East and beyond.
Naturally, I can elaborate on a number of these points. I anticipate that 25% of my substack postings will be directed toward the above topics… everything else will reflect my other interests or podcast materials. The reasoning for organizing my online presence in such a way is very simple: social media tends to capture inner-thoughts and private conversations, making them public. With full participation in this new paradigm, more snark, sass, and drive-by humor (or worse, attempts at wisdom) convey only coarse projections of reality rather than the substance of one’s constitution. There is of course the in-crowd who may understand the layers of nuance, but that’s what private conversations were for in the first place. Without nuance, we all run the risk of getting misinterpreted at levels that only suit the misinterpreter. It’s a dead paradigm and I’m done with it. The internet can tip toward being the positive and productive place of its potential (I love natural alliteration).
Additionally, I will be using this platform to fundraise for our university—donations are tax deductible—rather than myself. If you see any place online trying to raise money for me personally, it is not sanctioned by me. That said, I don’t begrudge anyone’s effort for self-sufficiency and establishing a preferable livelihood. I patronize several others because I value subscribing to their publications. You should too. With all that said, consider making a donation to Agora University, and Holy Transfiguration College in particular.