Very insightful and not something I’d have thought of. A large part of me feels as though many of the issues of today can be blamed on the fact that nobody actually talks to eachother anymore. Socializing has been replaced with social media, where you see curated snapshots of your “friend’s” lives which only show the good, and get invested in the curated snapshots of the lives of celebrities. You look at your friends and random celebrities doing things instead of doing them yourself or with your friends. And in turn, you post your own curated snapshots to make yourself look good and feel like you’re participating, thus continuing the cycle.

This state of knowing only about the cool and fun things other people are doing while simultaneously never actually speaking to them causes you to feel left out because your life isn’t anywhere near as fun as their lives look, and the fact that people tend to only post good looking pictures of themselves online makes you feel bad about your own appearance, because you don’t look anywhere near as good as they make themselves look.

With how pervasive the atomization caused by the internet is, I should’ve known that even its greatest strength, its ability to deliver information, might have harmful side effects. Indeed, I wonder how many conversations I’ve not had the opportunity to partake in because I found what I wanted out of them on Google. Or books I haven’t read because I got what I wanted out of them on Google. Convenient, for sure, but perhaps it takes a little bit of the joy out of finding new information, whether that joy comes from the other stuff you learn along the way or the human interaction which occurs in the process.

great post

I feel like a similar thing happens because of social media like Instagram. people constantly lose the opportunity to tell others all about the things they do because they already did that in batch. what could easily become dozens of small conversations with different people, where one could add their own flavour to the story and improve it, making it ever more interesting each time it is told, ends up not happening at all. silent scrolling and tapping instead

on top of that, multimedia usually translates real moments badly - for the better or worse: that giant hill becomes tiny and boring or that perfect angle hides the ugly part of the scene and looks beautiful. not to mention the fact that they are taking away part of enjoying real moments for the sake of creating online content

I, myself, don’t do this. but I often travel with people who do and I lost track of the times I meet someone afterwards and start talking about it, only to be stopped with a “oh I saw it all already”. and I really can’t blame anyone, since it’s a very easy trap to fall into and it’s even expected of you in some social circles