Be honest, do you remember what you did before surfing the internet? How did you arrange to meet your friends before instant messaging? How on earth did you find your way around without interactive maps on your smart phone? Not easy questions to answer, are they? The internet and social media are so deeply sewn into the fabric of modern society nowadays that it's painfully easy to take them for granted. It wasn't so long ago that the likes of chatrooms, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram were unheard of, yet these social media platforms seemed to shoot straight past infancy and reach the point where they became not just simple tools for communication, but also vital business assets. Internet use, social media, and chatrooms have grown and changed drastically over the past couple of decades or so, and what better way to depict the human obsession with modern technology than through the moving image medium of film? The internet has been a revelation in its ability to connect the world together, and many movies have dedicated themselves to reflecting the wonders of the world wide web; some good (The Matrix, Her), some not so good (The Net, Swimfan), while some unabashedly resembling feature-length commercials for the likes of AOL and Google (You've Got Mail, The Internship). However, there have also been films that've chosen to take a very different look at how the internet and social media have been used, applied, and abused during their relatively youthful existence. Here are twelve such explorations.
