Slashdot Mirror
Insomniacs, the Phantoms of the Internet
theodp writes "Ever since she was a toddler, freelance writer Lily Burana has been a Stay Up Late kind of girl. When her kindergarten teacher asked students 'What time do you go to bed?,' young Lily felt compelled to lie rather than rat out her own mother by saying, 'Oh, between midnight and 1 a.m.' She still suffers from insomnia, but has discovered that Facebook is the Promised Land for the awake and alone. She finds comfort in the company of others who, like her, live counter to the conventional rhythm of a sunny-day world."
And here I thought the lack of interaction with people was a positive aspect of staying up late.
I would guess a lot of slashdotters fall in to this category or at least at some point have. But the difference is that I enjoy the quiet and alone time during night and hence would stay away from sites like Facebook. You get insane amount of work done during night time - there's no people chitchatting all the time nor can you really go out somewhere so you don't get lazy. It does however lead to weird sleeping patterns, but as long as you don't need to go anywhere in the morning it doesn't really matter anymore.
Insomnia (307.42, DSM IV, pg. 599) [doesn't every geek have a copy of the official guide to crazy human behavior?] is not the word I would use (I don't have a problem getting to sleep or maintaining sleep). I'm a night owl. My whole life I have basically lived ~8 hours behind wherever I live (i.e. I go to bed at 4-5am local time), and I sleep for 8 to 8.5 hours like a clock (seriously, my primary experience of sleep is I put my head down and then *poof* I'm awake, rested, and it's 8 to 8.5 hours later). Fortunately I have found a way to use this to my benefit (tech writer/minimal interruptions, cover stuff that happens at night). But honestly the though of a "regular" 9-5 existence sort of ... well horrifies me (when do you normal people run errands? and rush hour, like WTF? you realize that you can belt across a city at 2pm in like 15 minutes, but at rush hour that will easily take an hour). Also added advantages: the internet (locally) is faster (the normals are asleep), no phone/email/SMS/IM/etc. interruptions(the normals are asleep) and as a result I am far more productive.
What does insomnia have to do with being nocturnal? Night owls still sleep, they just sleep in the daytime! Insomniacs can't sleep at all, the poor buggers. It figures, it was written by a journalist. They aren't the sharpest pencils in the box, you know.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!