Tonight, while talking to Philo about some web drama that’s afoot, I was thinking some more about the feeling I brought up at the end of my post about the recently deceased Brandon Carl Vedas, aka “Ripper.”

I was thinking about that surreal sensation when the membrane between the “virtual reality” of the internet and the real reality of the physical world starts to tear…

I’ve experienced that tearing sensation before…when this blog has undergone attacks from trolls who make very personal digs, I can actually feel my heart rate shift and my face flush with anger. When I read an article I’ve written that’s been published in a magazine or newspaper, and then posted on their website, I get excited and have been known to run around the apartment clapping. And when I read about Brandon’s death, the hairs on my arm stood up…because I witnessed the experience of others wrestling with that tearing sensation.

It’s an uncomfortable feeling. You think to yourself, “Self, it’s the fucking internet. I can’t actually be feeling like this … it’s just some words on a computer screen. I have a real life with real people in it, and my real emotions are reserved for those real experiences.”

I’ve decided that the only appropriate name for the uncomfortable tearing of the artificial veil between the “real world” and the internet is ripping. And that seems like an appropriate homage.