Well put, and it can’t be said often enough. I hope people are listening. My mother had one of those “thought for the day” calendars which are pretty trite, but one stuck with me. “We wouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of us if we realized how seldom they do.”
Maybe remind yourself that there are likely thousands and thousands of pictures of X (Grand Canyon, some bird, the band you are watching, etc.) taken by professionals, you don’t need to take one.
That's why most of us take a few pics but there are so many who film entire concerts on their phone that there must be another explanation. Maybe they don't enjoy something unless they watch it on their phone.
I do get the odd snapshot of an event. Although that does interrupt things. But I am really not sure what is going on. For some at least it is definitely social media points.
“There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes almost incredulously real.”
G. K. Chesterton - Chaucer (Collected Works) 1932
And that light will never be found nor experienced in the displacement of reality with simulacra.
You’re touching on something long in the making. The creep of Representation displacing Reality in people's daily lives has been difficult to endure observing in the past 40 years.
I’m early GenX. My original awareness of this was honed in grad school (late '80s) while studying mediaeval philosophy on my own (Avicenna, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Occam) on the topic of representation and similitude. I did this study with the input of my mentor/teacher as counterbalance to the hogwallow of the "postmodernists"/"deconstructionists" for whom, it seemed, everything was a performative-signification drama mapped to a larger stage of social posturing. They couldn't conceive that life could ever be lived in the moment, without thinking of the next conference speech, poster session, article, interview, syllabus, observer, applauder, or bon mot. This was a commercialization of daily existence even before the internet amped that up on technometh.
Read that again please: the transactional-display element was there before the internet. The internet, and particularly the portable internet, “democratized” it.
The pomo/decon assertion of an internalized Panopticon was, to my young eye, more totalitarian than anything Foucault wrote about (prisons, schools, clinics, other institutions), for it set up the individual as both subject and object of the "gaze" they wrote about so bodice-heavingly. Once trapped in that vortex, and hypnotized by it, and riled up by it, and confused by it (Alice-in-Wonderland), people (redefined as “audience members”) were—it seemed to me and a few other student colleagues—ripe for exploitation.
But one might argue that that was always the purpose of propaganda…and of rhetoric. As well as of other institutional systems.
For example, can we forget that the world’s first intentionally designed global telecommunications network was incorporated in 1540, blasphemously named the “Society of Jesus”? Read the charter. It says right in there: propaganda fide, worldwide. They formed solely as a global-scope media operation to push back against the loss of papal authority that the printing press and mass literacy/vernacular Bible reading engendered.
This wasn’t about Jesus—whose medium was walking around and telling stories—but about authoritative control of access to mediated accounts of his words and deeds, and how to exercise that control.
Where the mid-20th-century pomo/decons were forced on us as students, there were few acts so resented as bringing up Guy Debord, whose "Society of the Spectacle" (1967) stripped bare their "class warfare" as a performative spectacle (not a socioeconomic reality as they asserted). He was an imperfect instrument...but thankfully even the "new right" could hear what he had to say eventually. (“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”)
So it was mediaeval philosophers who prepared me to observe the emerging internet in the ‘90s used as a turbocharged, automated, increasingly monetized engine of replacing the lived moment with the displaced, honed, performative moment. Television had been long before morphed from the normalized, agenda-setting, household-schedule-setting "electronic rabbi" in the living room to a ubiquitous presence everywhere, thanks to cable and CNN. The genre of "man on the street" had already been established, probably first by Hollywood (“Hey, kids—let’s put on a show!”)…and there were now 24/7 content holes to be filled on hundreds of channels.
It was easily recognized and often cynically noted in my department that CNN was not a news station and never was. It was an instrument designed to use the new technological ubiquity to organize and deliver audiences to advertisers and propagandists. There are still people who think that “news” is something other than this.
Thank you for letting me comment at length. I fervently hope we are witnessing, and creating, openings to unpack one of the most destructive operations against humanity. Though, sadly, infuriatingly, horrifyingly…so many humans have embraced it, thrilled to be part of the BorgMatrix, willing to turn in their neighbors or get stabbed with unknown potions for a donut with sprinkles and Twitter upthumbs.
Agreed. Picture someone pausing at a child’s first steps — not to watch, but to film, then anxiously checking for likes while missing the next milestone entirely. Now imagine that behavior scaling into a life filtered for others’ approval, shaped by algorithm, and hollowed out by applause.
It seems to be everywhere though. I do get the urge to record a child's first steps. But the incessant recording of things you have paid to enjoy is disturbing to me. At times it seems like an inability to let life happen.
I worry for the younger people who have not known what life was like before cell phones and social media. Many have missed out on developing real communication skills face to face.
There is something about social media that tends to make people less courteous than they would be in person, or at least more flip and snarky. It is a highly toxic environment.
Texting leaves no room for observing facial expression and voice tone, so it can easily be misunderstood. I've seen teenagers have a long text thread with a love relationship over something, going back and forth. It would be much more productive to talk in person or at least on the phone. That seems too intimidating to do, so they would rather just text.
As for the digital narcissists, it reminds me of Andy Warhol back in the 60's talking about how in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. I always shrugged that off as some kind or artsy hip jargon, but now it seems down right prophetic.
Even before cell phones and social media were big, there was the advent of Reality TV back in the 90's. It's alarming to see the things and bad behavior people will do to get recognition. We've all seen some kind of trouble where, instead of responding as a human being, out comes the phone to record it.
The last 30 years have seen society become cruder, disrespectful, and more anxious. Before that, there was no Reality TV, cell phones, or social media. We have to be careful with this stuff.
Since I don't have this problem, nor do I have it in my vicinity or am exposed to it, unless looking for it (such as reading an article on it such as this one) I have a hard time achieving more than a purely intellectual understanding of it.
Hoenstly, I'd compare most social media - the "snippets and snits"-kind such as X, Bluesky, Facebook and so on - to scrawling on the wall of a public toilet. That's what it feels like to me, and that's why long-form articles Substack-style are my go-to (apart from traditional publications and reading studies and official reports and such). I've tried, but I don't seem to get that coveted dopamine-hit that you're supposed to when you see the "Like"-counter tick upwards.
Me, I get worried when I see someone liking a comment of mine.
(I decided to put this comment in "Me-myself-and-I"-form to stick with the theme of the article.)
The strategy is obvious however: the only winning move is not to play the game according to the opposition's rules. Exactly what that looks like, well that must be determined by the individual on a case-by-case basis. Example:
Once upon a time, a friend of mine would always reply with "Maybe" when asked "I Saturday a good day for you to get in a game of WEGSWD6?". "Maybe" and a long list of "what ifs" and excuses in order to keep his/her options open, should their mood change.
(I'm sure everyone has a friend like that.)
To me such behaviour reads as lacking respect. It's essentially saying "To me, your time isn't valuable and so I'll leave you hanging on a maybe to be decided by my whims". Doesn't have to be that harsh or anything but thoughtlessness but there it is anyway.
This friend annoyed our mutual cricle of friends the same way. Always maybe. Always maybe doing something else, undetermined. So.
I started interrupting the spiel when it started by saying: "I don't need to know why or why not yes or no will do". This had an immediate positive effect. He/she grew more specific and would bluntly say "No, sorry, it's mom's birthday" or somesuch - something checkupable and tangible instead of vague.
In the long run this has had a very positive effect on this person. He/she slowly became more assertive over time, and picked up the same mannerism, even at work, interrupting co-workers with: "Stop. I don't need to know why you want the next weekend off. File a note at least ten days in advance and you'll be notified at least five days before the date you wrote."-
The moral of the story? Cut to the bone. Cut away all the social stuff, except when being social is the point of the interaction.
And read R.E. Howards 'Conan'-stories. All the wisdom for a happy healthy life is contained within those.
I didn't get the social media gene either. And scrawls on public toilets seems pretty close to me. I too prefer longform. I don't even like videos, although they seem popular.
Getting upset about something someone said to you on the Internet is like reading "Fuck you!" on the bathroom wall and thinking, "Fuck me? How dare they???"
According to the article in Futurism, a publication I know less about than I do nuclear physics, there's starting to crop up cases of people becoming psychotic through use of AI (or the AI is helping a latent psychotic state emerge).
Social media stimulating narcissistic traits in general and even more so the full range of Cluster B-traits combined with AI as a vector for causing/activating psychoses and psychotic behaviour?
Perhaps... this is a sort-of evolutionary culling that we are seeing the start of?
Or it's a "joornalist" using anecdotal findings to make a henhouse out of a feather.
Well put, and it can’t be said often enough. I hope people are listening. My mother had one of those “thought for the day” calendars which are pretty trite, but one stuck with me. “We wouldn’t worry so much about what other people think of us if we realized how seldom they do.”
Yes, most are caught up in their own little worlds. It is quite liberating to remember that.
I am not against technology. But I do think it costs us something.
That's a Mignon McLaughlin quote. Her stuff is gold:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/248519.Mignon_McLaughlin
“Every society honors its live conformists and its dead troublemakers.”
― Mignon McLaughlin
#
Now that is a very astute observation.
The Complete Neurotic's Notebook is a masterpiece.
"A man shouldn't marry in his twenties. The girl he's going to wind up wanting hasn't even been born yet."
She didn't mince her words.
Maybe remind yourself that there are likely thousands and thousands of pictures of X (Grand Canyon, some bird, the band you are watching, etc.) taken by professionals, you don’t need to take one.
Yes, that too. I think people have a need to say I was there; look, I took this.
That's why most of us take a few pics but there are so many who film entire concerts on their phone that there must be another explanation. Maybe they don't enjoy something unless they watch it on their phone.
I do get the odd snapshot of an event. Although that does interrupt things. But I am really not sure what is going on. For some at least it is definitely social media points.
Guaranteed they never watch it again. Very few ever do…
Agreed.
And what did they pay for the concert ticket so that they could record the event in mono, instead of enjoying it live in stereophonic sound?
There you go again, using logic. That should be a hate crime, lol.
Yes, people used to actually mail post cards!
What barbarians they were!
“There is at the back of all our lives an abyss of light, more blinding and unfathomable than any abyss of darkness; and it is the abyss of actuality, of existence, of the fact that things truly are, and that we ourselves are incredibly and sometimes almost incredulously real.”
G. K. Chesterton - Chaucer (Collected Works) 1932
And that light will never be found nor experienced in the displacement of reality with simulacra.
You shine that light so well.
You flatter me kind Sir.
A salubrious take, Spiff.
You’re touching on something long in the making. The creep of Representation displacing Reality in people's daily lives has been difficult to endure observing in the past 40 years.
I’m early GenX. My original awareness of this was honed in grad school (late '80s) while studying mediaeval philosophy on my own (Avicenna, Aquinas, Duns Scotus, Occam) on the topic of representation and similitude. I did this study with the input of my mentor/teacher as counterbalance to the hogwallow of the "postmodernists"/"deconstructionists" for whom, it seemed, everything was a performative-signification drama mapped to a larger stage of social posturing. They couldn't conceive that life could ever be lived in the moment, without thinking of the next conference speech, poster session, article, interview, syllabus, observer, applauder, or bon mot. This was a commercialization of daily existence even before the internet amped that up on technometh.
Read that again please: the transactional-display element was there before the internet. The internet, and particularly the portable internet, “democratized” it.
The pomo/decon assertion of an internalized Panopticon was, to my young eye, more totalitarian than anything Foucault wrote about (prisons, schools, clinics, other institutions), for it set up the individual as both subject and object of the "gaze" they wrote about so bodice-heavingly. Once trapped in that vortex, and hypnotized by it, and riled up by it, and confused by it (Alice-in-Wonderland), people (redefined as “audience members”) were—it seemed to me and a few other student colleagues—ripe for exploitation.
But one might argue that that was always the purpose of propaganda…and of rhetoric. As well as of other institutional systems.
For example, can we forget that the world’s first intentionally designed global telecommunications network was incorporated in 1540, blasphemously named the “Society of Jesus”? Read the charter. It says right in there: propaganda fide, worldwide. They formed solely as a global-scope media operation to push back against the loss of papal authority that the printing press and mass literacy/vernacular Bible reading engendered.
This wasn’t about Jesus—whose medium was walking around and telling stories—but about authoritative control of access to mediated accounts of his words and deeds, and how to exercise that control.
Where the mid-20th-century pomo/decons were forced on us as students, there were few acts so resented as bringing up Guy Debord, whose "Society of the Spectacle" (1967) stripped bare their "class warfare" as a performative spectacle (not a socioeconomic reality as they asserted). He was an imperfect instrument...but thankfully even the "new right" could hear what he had to say eventually. (“In societies where modern conditions of production prevail, all of life presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation.”)
So it was mediaeval philosophers who prepared me to observe the emerging internet in the ‘90s used as a turbocharged, automated, increasingly monetized engine of replacing the lived moment with the displaced, honed, performative moment. Television had been long before morphed from the normalized, agenda-setting, household-schedule-setting "electronic rabbi" in the living room to a ubiquitous presence everywhere, thanks to cable and CNN. The genre of "man on the street" had already been established, probably first by Hollywood (“Hey, kids—let’s put on a show!”)…and there were now 24/7 content holes to be filled on hundreds of channels.
It was easily recognized and often cynically noted in my department that CNN was not a news station and never was. It was an instrument designed to use the new technological ubiquity to organize and deliver audiences to advertisers and propagandists. There are still people who think that “news” is something other than this.
Thank you for letting me comment at length. I fervently hope we are witnessing, and creating, openings to unpack one of the most destructive operations against humanity. Though, sadly, infuriatingly, horrifyingly…so many humans have embraced it, thrilled to be part of the BorgMatrix, willing to turn in their neighbors or get stabbed with unknown potions for a donut with sprinkles and Twitter upthumbs.
https://abysspostcard.substack.com/p/the-summarized-life/
Agreed. Picture someone pausing at a child’s first steps — not to watch, but to film, then anxiously checking for likes while missing the next milestone entirely. Now imagine that behavior scaling into a life filtered for others’ approval, shaped by algorithm, and hollowed out by applause.
⬖ Jotted down during office hours at Frequency of Reason: https://bit.ly/4jTVv69
It seems to be everywhere though. I do get the urge to record a child's first steps. But the incessant recording of things you have paid to enjoy is disturbing to me. At times it seems like an inability to let life happen.
I worry for the younger people who have not known what life was like before cell phones and social media. Many have missed out on developing real communication skills face to face.
There is something about social media that tends to make people less courteous than they would be in person, or at least more flip and snarky. It is a highly toxic environment.
Texting leaves no room for observing facial expression and voice tone, so it can easily be misunderstood. I've seen teenagers have a long text thread with a love relationship over something, going back and forth. It would be much more productive to talk in person or at least on the phone. That seems too intimidating to do, so they would rather just text.
As for the digital narcissists, it reminds me of Andy Warhol back in the 60's talking about how in the future, everyone would be famous for 15 minutes. I always shrugged that off as some kind or artsy hip jargon, but now it seems down right prophetic.
Even before cell phones and social media were big, there was the advent of Reality TV back in the 90's. It's alarming to see the things and bad behavior people will do to get recognition. We've all seen some kind of trouble where, instead of responding as a human being, out comes the phone to record it.
The last 30 years have seen society become cruder, disrespectful, and more anxious. Before that, there was no Reality TV, cell phones, or social media. We have to be careful with this stuff.
I think modernity is driving us all insane. The phones are just accelerating it.
It is a concern what all this is doing to the young. They will have to find a way through but I suspect few will.
Since I don't have this problem, nor do I have it in my vicinity or am exposed to it, unless looking for it (such as reading an article on it such as this one) I have a hard time achieving more than a purely intellectual understanding of it.
Hoenstly, I'd compare most social media - the "snippets and snits"-kind such as X, Bluesky, Facebook and so on - to scrawling on the wall of a public toilet. That's what it feels like to me, and that's why long-form articles Substack-style are my go-to (apart from traditional publications and reading studies and official reports and such). I've tried, but I don't seem to get that coveted dopamine-hit that you're supposed to when you see the "Like"-counter tick upwards.
Me, I get worried when I see someone liking a comment of mine.
(I decided to put this comment in "Me-myself-and-I"-form to stick with the theme of the article.)
The strategy is obvious however: the only winning move is not to play the game according to the opposition's rules. Exactly what that looks like, well that must be determined by the individual on a case-by-case basis. Example:
Once upon a time, a friend of mine would always reply with "Maybe" when asked "I Saturday a good day for you to get in a game of WEGSWD6?". "Maybe" and a long list of "what ifs" and excuses in order to keep his/her options open, should their mood change.
(I'm sure everyone has a friend like that.)
To me such behaviour reads as lacking respect. It's essentially saying "To me, your time isn't valuable and so I'll leave you hanging on a maybe to be decided by my whims". Doesn't have to be that harsh or anything but thoughtlessness but there it is anyway.
This friend annoyed our mutual cricle of friends the same way. Always maybe. Always maybe doing something else, undetermined. So.
I started interrupting the spiel when it started by saying: "I don't need to know why or why not yes or no will do". This had an immediate positive effect. He/she grew more specific and would bluntly say "No, sorry, it's mom's birthday" or somesuch - something checkupable and tangible instead of vague.
In the long run this has had a very positive effect on this person. He/she slowly became more assertive over time, and picked up the same mannerism, even at work, interrupting co-workers with: "Stop. I don't need to know why you want the next weekend off. File a note at least ten days in advance and you'll be notified at least five days before the date you wrote."-
The moral of the story? Cut to the bone. Cut away all the social stuff, except when being social is the point of the interaction.
And read R.E. Howards 'Conan'-stories. All the wisdom for a happy healthy life is contained within those.
Lol. Great advice.
I didn't get the social media gene either. And scrawls on public toilets seems pretty close to me. I too prefer longform. I don't even like videos, although they seem popular.
Seanbaby said it best:
Getting upset about something someone said to you on the Internet is like reading "Fuck you!" on the bathroom wall and thinking, "Fuck me? How dare they???"
Hm. Then what's the internet-equal to "For a good time, call #####"?
Tinder?
Ha ha. Very good. And very true.
I find a lot to agree with in what you say, but will not "Like" your comment.
An amateur photo of a rainbow never looks as brilliant as the real thing. 🌈📷
Yes, quite. Experiences are not recordable. Except as some third-rate facsimile. I have no idea what people are doing at concerts or other events.
This seemed related:
https://futurism.com/commitment-jail-chatgpt-psychosis
According to the article in Futurism, a publication I know less about than I do nuclear physics, there's starting to crop up cases of people becoming psychotic through use of AI (or the AI is helping a latent psychotic state emerge).
Social media stimulating narcissistic traits in general and even more so the full range of Cluster B-traits combined with AI as a vector for causing/activating psychoses and psychotic behaviour?
Perhaps... this is a sort-of evolutionary culling that we are seeing the start of?
Or it's a "joornalist" using anecdotal findings to make a henhouse out of a feather.
I could believe this is the case. Look at Trump Derangement Syndrome. Triggered by trad media mainly. It certainly seems real.
So why not other breaks from reality?