AI images are still pretty awful :)
The Smartphone Generation
The other day I stumbled upon this quote on X in the context of a discussion about the "smartphone generation":
Feeling everything and experiencing nothing
That's probably a pretty good way of putting it. I have downloaded some of the popular apps myself some time ago to see what is going on there. Just so I could see what the youngest generation is up to (although e.g. TikTok has long been "taken over" by adults as well). It's a messy mix of all sorts of topics and it's probably the volatility of it all that gets people hooked. You can be watching a news report about something and the next clip is about intimate dating tips, then you get told how to get rich in 3 simple steps while watching a group of sky divers with wing suits flying down high cliffs over treacherous terrain in the next moment, then someone gets stabbed on the streets, and finally getting bombarded with boobs and "camel toes" in the next swipe... It's kind of crazy and (young) people love it. There hasn't been something like this ... ever. It's literally the first time in history that human consciousness is getting this kind of an input.
TVs or magazines? Yeah right, that was boring in comparison. The internet? A bit more tantalizing, but also pale. The daily fix really did start with social media. It's no wonder people are addicted to it. Even facebook or instagram (the early versions) were nothing compared to the "TikTok experience". It was more about connecting and posting pictures. But now you instantly get engaged with such a wide array of impressions that one's brain gets overwhelmed by it. A common experience is to forget almost instantly what one watched just moments ago. It's just too much (unimportant) information that the brain has to filter out. It's quite literally protecting itself by this overflow of stimuli. This makes the mind dull and indifferent.
While the pictures of the accident used to make a deep impression, seeing the 20th horror scene starts to become just noise in a sea of calamity. Sure, there are the beautiful clips of wandering around bare-footed in primal nature or the lady with the beautiful voice, but even these impressions lose their depths with every continuing swipe. Users get to feel everything, but they do not actually experience them. I was not really hiking on those mountains or engaging with those people having fun. I was not really there when the joke was being told and everyone erupted in laughter and I was not really there when the delicious triple chocolate was served in a spectacular manner. And no, the birthday cake wasn't for me either. I become an observer craving for these experiences and just short of telling myself that they are real, I get deprived of the actual experience and left with a shallow feeling of the actual thing.
It's enough to keep one going, at least for a while. It's probably why a sense of dreadfulness can set in after engaging with this kind of social media. I am not really partaking in anything meaningful - I am not living my life. I am living the lives of others as a feeling.
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