We live in an insane world. By you being able to read this via a massive digital networking system that delivers information almost instantly testifies to the unbelievable nature of modern living.
And with existence having upgraded (and continuing to do so at an exponential rate) to more sophisticated levels of technological complexity, our somewhat more placid psychologies have not all been as quick to join the bandwagon.
Yes, we happily share our joys and sorrows online to an ever-growing audience, but this is only one side of the story. I believe that most social media users can, in some way, attest to a certain sadness that shadows modern communication. This existential ennui translates through the relative expendability bestowed upon a person’s psychology by having to (impossibly) keep up with either business or egoic grandstanders who hog the walls and minds and lives of the social media community.
You’re not doing yoga? You’re not eating organic? You don’t have an opinion about Trump? You’re not lamenting COVID or telling people that they’re stupid because they did/didn’t share some or other documentary that has suddenly turned laypeople into biochemists? What’s wrong with you!?
These are the kinds of messages delivered daily through these platforms of self-righteousness, these online ‘Courts of the People’ generally commandeered by denial-ridden practitioners of the very populism they claim to be free of. Much like religion, the premise of being able to create co-dependent communities whose growth is fostered through genuine human equality has been compromised by genuine human opportunism and the constant need to feed chasm-like personal voids.
Social media has brought the world closer together than ever, while at the same time eviscerating personal psychologies to be laid out on the altar of expendable obscurity. In turn, this propagates the addictive need to continually refresh for a distracted, equally addicted audience that, in truth, couldn’t care for longer than a screen swipe.