The Age of the Web Hermit

Recreation and procreation

Gaming is not the be all and end all of online recreation though. If you like something a little more cultural then you can peruse the contents of a great many galleries and art collections such as the Tate gallery.

Apart from visual art, the web is also home to almost every music track ever recorded, every movie ever made and every book ever written if you’re willing to hunt around a bit. It’s a sobering thought that your PC sitting in front of you right now could be give you the absolute best works that humanity has produced in the fields of art, literature, music and cinematography for nothing more than a bit of searching. There’s nothing to stop our Web Hermit from being a renaissance man, or a punk, or a TV addict or anything else.

As with any pioneering venture the internet has somewhat outrun law enforcement, and as such we live in the golden age of data piracy. While our Web Hermit might be something of a naughty pixie in the eyes of the media corporations, he’s probably savvy enough to get everything he wants off the web without having to open his wallet.

Any and all cultural excesses are available to our listless specimen in front of his monitor. That’s all well and good, but the real advantage of the Web Hermit is not that he can manage his entire world from his computer at home. The true beauty of life as a Web Hermit is that because your income, finances and friends are all accessible on line, you can get to them from anywhere.

The Tate allows you to view all its works online, and classics like Romeo and Juliet are freely available.[/center]

It’s perfectly possible to remain as the archetypal cellar dweller, but with the internet accessible easily throughout the developed world there really is no reason for the Web Hermit to physically be in any one place in preference to another. With email and messenger programs blissfully indifferent to which end of the planet you’re connecting from, with all the manifold research resources of the internet to play with and with Skype saving you from breaking the bank on the phone, geography has never been less important.

So if you can work from anywhere, can you get to anywhere? Naturally. Booking flights, hotels, activities and arranging to meet friends abroad has never been easier. This is again where we are seeing how the internet is not just becoming an option, it is becoming the preferable way to handle transactions. While booking online is one way to arrange holidays, it is fast becoming the only way to get hold of tickets for gigs, festivals and sporting events. With tickets over the phone for a lot of events selling out in minutes - if at first you don’t succeed, for nearly every event you can think of there’s a ticket on Ebay for it.

Being able to travel the world and get touted tickets to the best gigs and so on is all fine and dandy, but the Web Hermit can’t live alone forever. The majority of people meet their life partner at work. Since the Web Hermit makes his money on the internet then it’s fair enough that he should also seek a partner here. Internet dating has not exactly revolutionised dating as we know it. Dates are still pretty much exactly as they have always been, however the process of finding somebody to go on a date with has become so much easier that hunting for a partner has become less of a pursuit and more of a series of auditions.


Rather than lamenting having nobody to go out with your active Internet spouse-hunter can maintain a Fonz-worthy dating schedule without going to all the hassle of actually finding the likely candidates in their natural environment. As with any process designed to help find a partner those who have been successful will swear by it and those for whom it has failed will swear at it, but in any case with millions of subscribers to dating websites in the UK alone, the odds of our Web Hermit finding true love, or at least his first wife, are pretty favourable.