Recently I noted a pattern, not a recent one tho, of the TikTok era format, portray, 9:16, phone sized vertical screens, which is somehow opposite of our natural wide lenses optical view.
Life is been portrayed as glimpses of other peoples rooms and apartments, we notice everyone everywhere in the West (not really sure how it is in China, but I guess is not so different in this regard). So we are exposed, via scrolling, to what resembles to me as an small dollhouse way of focusing and experiencing other human beings.
I just wanted to drop it and see what do you think. Also, besides the multi-directional panopticon there is everywhere a feeling of Simmification (from the Sims) of living standards, where everything is picked from a menu of items, and deliver to your house, as if it is a natural thing to do.
Everything seems so standard, so homogenous, so global, that people needs to escape to some random 3rd world place to live actual living and "experiences"...
Where does real experience and adventure lies today?
It’s always a thrill to watch someone, usually without them planning on it, often while looking over their shoulder on the train, open the photo storage app on their phone. It looks like a social media feed. It looks like Instagram. But you see the sorts of things that nobody shares—perfect and mistakes together, the erotic and unerotic nudes (a picture to boost the photographer's self-esteem, to entice a real or imagined lover, and a shot of a boil on their hamstring), pages and pages of panels of barely different pictures, unplanned sequences of images (dinner, dinner, dinner, window, portrait, dog, child, dinner). It's the raw material for the curated individual feed. Nobody could share this.
Everything is perfect. We are given precisely what we want to see. Nobody wants to disrupt that. They couldn’t, even if they tried. If you lose your mind one day and dump your photo app directly into the feed, it would be safely filtered, cleansed, deleted. Most people don’t have an actual audience, anyway. It’s set up so that we don't perceive the abyss.
A few years ago, I began following the YouTube career of a young black woman who lives in Huntsville. Since she turned sixteen, she has not stopped posting videos on the internet. I was delivered to her by software that knew I was weak enough to click on a thumbnail of a girl in a bikini. Over the past four years, she's posted at least a video a day. I was first disturbed, and later fascinated by the commitment she has to becoming a YouTube celebrity. It seems, apparently, to be her only goal in life. The videos routinely generate merely double-digit views. She works at a hospital canteen. She’s pretty in the face and has a nice figure. If she weren't so dumb, if she didn't live in Alabama, she could earn a living by being on the internet. It doesn't matter. She's never gotten better at editing videos. There's no "content." The videos feature long static takes of her living space. She rants at the camera. She gets cut off. She complains about not having a job. She talks about her father's murder and the trouble her family has finding a place to live. She reacts with embarrassment when her younger brother appears on the screen to flash a pistol or make gang signs. So, there is some authenticity there. But it’s hopeless. Being sent to a labor camp would be more merciful than whatever is being done to her.
We don't perceive ourselves. It's impossible to be a narcissist. We stare at other people.
I'm old enough that I remember when social media was social. I'm taking this insight from Marko Jukic. I remember collective imaginaries. I remember making friends by posting. I remember getting insights into the lives of strangers. I remember getting in arguments. Now, the interaction is shallow. I appreciated opening Instagram today to see that a fashion photographer I admire liked some of the pictures I took on a recent trip.
I was in a Third World country, too. I did have some adventures—and experiences that went far beyond what was revealed in the pictures I'm marketing on social media. I still desire an audience; I wish I could tell the stories to somebody other than my closest friends.
More people were locked into phones than back home in the modern world. But there are freaks and dropouts everywhere, though. I don't mean that I'm looking for degenerates or bums, but people that have opted out of—or, who, because of temperament, were never able to adapt to—the things that make all of us sick. You have to go out and find them. That’s the easiest solution. You need to find those people. (And then refuse the drive to launch a TikTok channel about their lives and your insights.)
The alternative is to restore social media, which is probably more difficult. But that would make it easier to find companions for adventures and give your new friends guides to worthwhile experiences—and make you feel less guilty about carrying a screen around in your pocket.
>>4181 Recently I watched this documentary discussed in other thread ( https://sofiechan.com/p/3983 ) where the main character, the 23y/o solo-climber alpinist, Marc-André Leclerc intentionally withheld his free solo ascent of Mount Robson from the production of the documentary The Alpinist, as he believed having filmmakers present would disqualify the climb as a true solo. That represents to me the real spirit of the adventure nowadays, a clear statement of what truly life is.
As a matter of fact, being online, discussing what could real adventure or even real experience is, is a dystopian panoramic of what modern artificial ages are. As we merge with machinic-rythm, we are literally loosing our souls. This is a trade off nobody discusses about, but it is indeed the most important one.
This is one thing that the anti-tech left in my city gets quite right. Im often frustrated at parties when I accidentally mention AI and end up in a tedious argument, but many of these people simply don't have smartphones or if they do they keep them well hidden. Since I moved here I've made a commitment to becoming human, and I've been iterating through martial arts and dance classes, joined a choir. Picking up oddballs with no social media on the way. I don't know if it's this town in particular or if this scene is everywhere just behind the surface, but now I know how to find it ill look for it wherever I go.
Funnily enough a lot of the leftists that I meet are so exhausted by the infighting and backbiting that I can easily tempt them into more interesting dialogue. Land, after all, was a child of that scene.
I still engage with all the hyperstim anti-social media but less and less. Society does have self-correcting mechanisms after all, if that stuff does destroy people then people will soon adapt.
I barely use social media nowadays, only got X left and this forum. I am old enough to remember when the internet was alive, and you could spend an evening discussing politics on some random philosopher Facebook wall... wasn't long ago maybe 12-14 years ago the interactions were like this. You didn't know that much about the people commenting besides their name and avatars...
But now, kids only got these hyper personal not avatar like profiles, real names, posting about their lives when is cool enough to be posted, and also this influencers recording on their apartments saying things or doing make up, you get false quotidianity shaping your insaciable feed.
