Recently, the internet has begun to resemble the shadow of a snake eating itself. The afterimage of a giant, now sagging under its own weight.
A child of the online golden age, I’ve sat witness to a few iterations of internet culture: rudimentary HTML sites for niche communities, Flash pages, YouTube’s nascency, educational (and definitely non-educational) online game portals, the birth of blogging, and what seems to be the start of this story: the death of slow on the internet.
Social media isn’t fun
I don’t think Maslow's hierarchy of needs had this sort of dependency in mind. I find myself now approaching my phone with a visceral, quiet dread. What once used to be a reliable dopamine hit now feels like a draining obligation that, upon completion of an undetermined-yet-constantly-increasing amount of time scrolling, weighs more and more heavily on my already-dark under-eyes. And instead of once-leaving joyful, I lift my eyes with a bones-deep tiredness and disappointment having wasted my time.
As a younger millennial, I’ve heard the term phone addiction thrown around since the first iPhone. It mattered very little to me when I felt like I had infinite wisdom at my fingertips. Now, I’m starting to feel how my muscle memory craves to scroll, but my brain is receiving nothing in return. Like constantly losing, but needing to return to the dealer for another — hopefully lucky this time — go. I no longer feel a sense of value out of my relationship with social media, but rather a pang of sadness realizing the well I’m reaching for has run dry. Maybe it’s that bit of futile hopefulness I’m now recognizing as I’m holding my phone, the key thing that’s made me question how much enjoyment I’m getting out of this routine anymore.
Dilution of content, ideas, and craft
Shorter, faster, briefer. Content has gone rabid, foaming at the mouth for the potential of reaching as many people, as quickly as possible, with the most engagement. Apps are rewarding the speed of content turnover over the stability of the audience. More is being said now than ever before, by more creators. But is any of it meaningful anymore? I spend an hour mindlessly scrolling, in which I see repeated themes by people that can easily be interchangeable. Variety has become commodified so much online that every corner has been squeezed of originality for the sake of digestibility.
But what’s happening by rewarding concentrated (and even that, I feel, is an overly-generous term) content is the brutal dilution of value. TikTok, Instagram, YouTube Shorts, and anywhere else that decided to use short-form content (I’m sneering at you, LinkedIn) is now the place where nuance goes to die. Quietly, these companies have decided that there is no grey, only black and white — provoking controversy and rewarding crudeness, just so you spend an extra thirty seconds in shock, awe, or objection to what you’ve seen. You’re no longer rewarded for complexity of thought. Juicy sound-bytes rule the world.
Companies melting your brain for an extra penny.
I find myself no longer believing that the words social media company and integrity can coexist. It’s shocking how dramatic of a shift from being a user-centered space to an advertising-centered space the internet has become. There isn’t a corner left that isn’t targeting SEO to gain traction, attention, or reaction for a bit of business. And all of that feels…dirty. Taking once-pleasant digital spaces that focused on growing communities and reconstructing them into a competitive carousel of advertisements, deliberately hoping to keep our attention for moments longer…I refuse to ignore the dissonance alarming in my body.
One of the side effects of working in so many different creative teams in my career is seeing how pervasive the desire to participate, and take advantage of, social media is for seemingly every industry. There’s a tangible pang of desperation seen in teams that don’t even really know why they’re so eager to participate. And knowing how many brilliant minds partake in the optimization of addictiveness doesn’t feel too different from tobacco agencies of past generations. Working where the money is isn’t an uncommon sentiment I hear, and more and more it feels like turning a blind eye to the very-real (and very scary) behavioral changes that are a direct result of the shift towards the attention economy forged by these companies.
But I can’t leave…can I?
I’m at the stage where logging off forever feels like a guilty-pleasure daydream. I’ve started asking myself Why am I using this platform? Why do I keep scrolling? How does it benefit me for how much time I give it? and I don’t like my lack of answers. But something — probably that deeply-rooted paranoia forged by muscle memory — keeps nagging me about FOMO, or missing out on something inspiring that will help me figure out my own life. Like I’m one swipe away from discovering a profound truth that will fix me, or my life. Even writing that felt ridiculous. And, what’s worse: this invasive feeling of longing is exactly what I’m supposed to feel.
In a near catatonic scrolling session, I stumbled across a faceless video that mentioned this sentiment in a broader context. When looking back to past civilizations, it asked the question: Why did the roman empire last so long? In the pause, I reflected on how little I remembered my history classes (or cared).
And they answer is troublingly-relatable: small luxuries. Why rebel against a system that no longer works for you if it grants you comfort, luxury, or ease in tiny moments of your life that you’d feel lost without? You can’t buy a house, but aren’t these limited edition water bottles a nice consolation prize? Be glad! You get to see what the entire world is doing at any given moment in time. What’s a day’s labor without access to sweet wine and the circus?
Our apathy is completely dependent on our reliance on our tiny luxuries, too. Social media fits this bill all too well. In order to stand up, to reshape the course of our society, you have to be aware of and willing to release certain comforts and amenities. To sit in discomfort through gritted teeth for a larger purpose. And it feels like we’ve been so comfortably detached from even realizing how reliant we’ve become on ephemeral, and ultimately non-vital, indulgences.
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I’ve stood witness to the world through little screens for most of my life. I’m not a philosopher, or even remotely close to equipped to articulate much of anything this big. Yet it feels significant, this frustration. If I feel it, others must too.
My big question, for no one in particular, is whether this is another change — or an irreversible turn towards the extinction of virtual sincerity? Has the internet corrupted itself beyond evolution, or is this just a bleaker chapter of its everlasting existence? Or are we granting too much passive acceptance to these companies? Are we, the communities, more in control than we think — and we can redirect the course of digital communication ourselves? My fingers are crossed for it.