Yes. Sometimes, too much is just too much. How can you effectively prioritise (or digest) when an endless, vast swamp—admittedly composed largely of baboon shrieking, chest-beating and effluvia—is at your fingertips? A sprawling landscape of noise and data and distraction, to numb you, desensitise you, program you, mind-fuck you, turn you into a stupid, drooling, hypnotised bot with no thoughts worth expressing…
The Internet was kinda good when everyone wasn’t on it. Before the establishment realised what a fantastic crowd control tool it was and declared that everyone should have access.
The world suddenly seems so small. There’s no mystery, no sense of wonder. I can potentially know the consistency of the last shit someone in Bogota took. Sometimes it’s hard to even avoid things like that. But there’s so little real communication of substance—actually, a lot of people have grown scared of it, in their little isolationist chambers, unsure of what is or isn’t the proper thing to say.
Stick with Faceborg. Hit the like button. Go UG UG UG a bit if you feel particularly adventurous and have the urge to hit a few keys.
Folks, I don’t even KNOW YOU anymore. You’ve been socially engineered into a weird new species who appears to completely lack empathy (crocodile tears about distant/abstract ideas & events notwithstanding), appears to lack the urge to physically engage or directly communicate, appears to exhibit numerous signs of autism and dissociation, appears to be losing attention span and intellectual focus… etc.
I don’t mean everyone, of course. Just a lot of people. Including a bunch of people I’ve known a long time. Except I guess I didn’t know them; you can’t know supposed individuals who are so easily converted to something else entirely. The person they appeared to be, clearly, was illusory.
Makes you wonder about sense of self in a broader sense. Are any of us really conscious in the way our self-mythologising cares to imply? Are we simply composite impressions built out of our genetics and experience? There are good arguments for that. But I like to believe the sum is greater than the parts. Delusionally, perhaps, but it’s a warm idea. But then people, supposedly intelligent people I personally know, allow themselves to be socially engineered and shaped with no resistance. That makes it hard to buy into such warm ideas. That’s what you’d expect from ROBOTS who can be programmed and reprogrammed effortlessly.
The Internet is boring. And people are getting pretty boring too. :(