I guess it took me a very long time to learn that there are people who are absolutely glued to instagram and TikTok the way I am to everything on my phone in general. I also started thinking about how all of the people I’ve met since my junior year of college (2020) have been people I only knew online, then I transitioned to work which is completely online, and here I am, still meeting more people online through dating apps, discord, instagram, and TikTok. I truly can’t grasp the absurdity of it all, I am living a cyberpunk reality (and I know I’m not the only one).

For the longest time, I thought to myself “Nah everyone else still goes out and meets people, I’m one of the weird ones.” But then I went outside. And I saw people doing what I’m doing right now in the comfort of my own home.

Makes total and complete sense why billionaires invested so highly in crypto and the metaverse. It’s actually another form of class war but applied to the digital realm 🙃

How much longer until we can consider technology, which should’ve been nothing other than a tool, as the new opiate of the masses

  • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.netEnglish
    34·
    3 months ago

    I think the really crazy thing about the online world is the separation of all the different spaces and the alienation that comes as a result.

    In the real world, it’s physical space. You gotta go through the city to get anywhere, see other people and see the world (even if it’s only a tiny slice of it). The people around you necessarily have similar experiences because you’re in the same physical space.

    Online, though, everyone can be isolated into a completely abstract Skinner box of dopamine shots administered at the frequency of their choosing. Your experience is your own, and only your own, with interactions with other people made as atomizing as possible by various mechanisms. People have to be consciously reminded that the people they talk with online are real humans behind a screen, because otherwise it really is just a sea of usernames vomiting text and media.

    The online world is so effective at atomizing its users that they forget there even is a society, it just becomes niche subcultures where other individuals are barely even perceived.