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HELLO, LONELINESS
Issue of 2005-08-22
Posted 2005-08-15
On July 14, 2004, someone using the pseudonym Lonely logged on to www.moviecodec.com, a Web site dedicated to the technicalities of creating, uploading, downloading, and viewing digital video files. Typically, the site’s message boards carry headings such as “DX 50 and DIV3 Codecs” and “How Do I Burn AVI Movies to DVD with Nero 6 Ultra Edition?” Lonely, however, decided to create a discussion forum entitled “I am so lonely will anyone speak to me.” “Ok so how are you,” the first respondent asked. “Are you a piece of pig’s bollok?” Before long, a different breed of visitor had begun to arrive. “Dude,” someone named wetfeet2000 posted a little over a week later, “I typed in 'I am lonely' in Google, and your post was the very first response. Does that make you the most popular loneliest person on the planet?”
By a serendipitous combination of the phrasing of Lonely’s declaration and moviecodec.com’s popularity among people who are interested in digital video, the forum had indeed jumped to the top of Google’s results for the phrase “I am lonely.” Visitors from around the world logged on with personal expressions of solitude, ranging from the adolescent (“Spring break really fucking sucks”) and the temporary (“My wife is gone for the night”) to the involved (“I’m in the final year of my Ph.D., I have no life, and I am broken up with my gf because she joined a cult”), the confused (“I typed: 'why is abc bittorrent not working' and I got 'I am lonely.' Not too hilarious”), and the existential (“I feel like a floating piece of dust in outer space”). Among the posters was moviecodec.com’s proprietor, a twenty-seven-year-old Danish computer programmer named Bjarne Lundgren. “I’m the webmaster/owner of moviecodec.com and I’m also quite lonely,” he wrote in November, punctuating his message with a yellow frowny face.
Reached recently at his home, in the city of Odense, Lundgren seemed only halfheartedly pleased about his role as the accidental confessor of online loneliness. “Moviecodec.com started out mainly because I was having problems with codecs myself,” he said. And while he can relate to the messages—“I’ve always been a kind of lonely guy,” he said—he hasn’t derived any therapeutic value from them. “I don’t personally get much out of it. But if other people get something out of it, that’s cool.”
The site’s visitors have posted a hundred and seven pages of musings about loneliness. “Just when you think 'it’s just me' you find other people feeling the same way,” a recent arrival wrote. (A few regulars have compiled a “lonely people reading list”: Salinger, Steinbeck, Susanna Tamaro’s “Follow Your Heart.”) Some posters have relayed desperation—“I am a US Cavalry Scout,” one message read. “Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t come back from Iraq”—while others seem merely bored. “I’m just watching the clock till my lunch comes along and I can eat my tortellini,” an office worker wrote. “Tortellini rocks the kazba.”
Because the site’s ads are also directed through Google, banners for depression-related pharmaceuticals began appearing on it, conveying an unintentional air of authority. “I have had to censor a few posts,” Lundgren said. “I think there was some guy telling people to kill themselves, and telling them how.” He has left up several messages threatening suicide, however. “Mostly, other people try and help them,” he said.
Lundgren, for his part, has been so busy lately with his obligations as Web master that he hasn’t had time to focus on loneliness. “I’ve got a few more friends,” he said. “And a girlfriend. In fact, that’s why I don’t have much time.”
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