CLICK

Japanese Frog Clicker Toy. 

Whenever I hear the word "click" in reference to internet traffic, I am reminded of one of the most annoying toys of my childhood. It was a little metal frog, tiny, made of tin in post-war Japan, with a metal underbelly which emitted a loud cricket-like click when pressed. Nothing, absolutely nothing, annoyed my mother more than that toy. I could watch her shoulders rise as her muscles tensed at the kitchen sink with each click. It was my first experience of consciously observing cause and effect.

The frog clicker disappeared one day. I got the message. Our house was like that. Investigating the disappearance would be a futile and dangerous pursuit. I knew that my mother knew what the frog toy represented. She was having none of it. Cause and effect in that domain was hers to rule. 

I worked in a blood analysis lab after I left dental school. It was nearly half a century ago. We did blood analysis visually through mechanical microscopes. Analysis machinery was just being developed and was still not as accurate as visual blood counts. I drew blood from patients from a syringe into tubes. The tubes were opened back in the lab by hand. They often broke in your hand, by the way, if the rubber stopper was stuck. Blood was orally sucked into thin glass pipettes. (Yes, if you inhaled too strongly, you got a vampiric taste of your patient.) Then the blood was dropped onto recyclable glass slides for the microscope. 

I counted blood cell types (red, white, eosinophils, etc) with a manual clicker, the type that was later used by bouncers to count patrons entering dance clubs, in order to observe fire law limits of occupancy. A coworker once asked me why I always grinned broadly while counting blood cells with my clicker. At the time, I had no idea. Now I speculate I was unconsciously reliving the Pavlovian power of annoyance I once felt in my mother's kitchen. 

The term "click" (or "klick") is also used in strategic parlance by military personnel. It can be used to indicate linear distance or movement in degrees along the arc of a weapon sight. And the familiar click of mechanical camera shutters for those of us who used to use them is imitated accurately now by digital photo apps. 

Clicking a mouse button on a link brings you to a site which then records you as a click, an indicator of traffic or views. It is the ultimately superficial measure of any internet content. Quantity of appeal or seduction by advertising with no guaranteed relation to quality of content. 

I have consciously compared the click volume of the content I watch on You Tube. Most of that content is of an intellectual sort. Some monologues or lectures. More often interviews or panels. I have been pleasantly astonished to find that click volume seems to correlate fairly predictably with the intelligence of the content concerning serious political or social discussion. Left, Center or Right, all seem to reflect this trend by my informal tally. The greater weight of intelligence now being on the Center-Right. 

Click observation in the darker realm of stupidity, however, is less encouraging. Car-crash videos, cat-bath videos, children walking into glass sliding doors, etc.. These seem to garner clicks on the basis of the extremity of their admittedly hypnotic appeal to that part of the human brain which feasts on Schadenfreude.

The Web click thing says something about the money-savvy people of our age, because clicks are cash. Attention-seeking behavior used to be seen as indicative of a neurotic need for acceptance or approval from strangers. It could lead to success in entertainment venues when paired with talent and practice. But this civilization has developed an economy in which attention-seeking behavior is rewarded with relatively easy celebrity and income. Relatively untalented or uneducated people can garner the same lucrative attention once reserved for outstanding lecturers, entertainers and philosophers. The bizarre and even the mediocre now get paid off.

And money makes the world go 'round. So focusing on contributing to the mass distraction of media can occupy a significant segment of our population as both consumers and producers. This externalization of personal focus, spurred by a need to make money in a world where fewer people are needed to fulfill actual jobs, has an inevitable impact on our societies. Causes and effects. The click is the currency of mass distraction. 

This all confirms my Buddhist-sourced notion of the difficulty of treading The Middle Way through human existence. That path is not a path of annoying or lauding clicks with their inevitable cumulative effects. It is not chosen for the attention it seeks from others, friendly or unfriendly. It is not chosen for its intellectual superiority or self-indulgent ignorance. It is chosen for its integrity, its calm and its attempt to view existence as it is, in totality. This path appeals to very few. It cannot be taught. I must be learned. It is not level or straight. It cannot be navigated by clicking a mouse on a Google map. It must be actively sought and discovered, one step at a time.