Unmoored
I've been really struggling lately. But there's been a struggle for a good while at this point. I grew up with the electric buzz of connected spaces and digital worlds, enjoying technology and feeling ever optimistic about where it will take humanity. In fact, that's been a lot of my life - as a kid and as a young adult existing alongside some very cynical people, particularly amplified when I was on social media in the 2010s. I quietly remained an optimistic soul with so much to enjoy, though: all of the delights of the games of previous years, the cutting edge new releases that always had something to enjoy, and the boundless horizons of where future advancements will take us despite what all the "what if phone bad actually" crowd would say. After all, I grew up on The Computer! I inhabited it and lived in it and I was rewarded with friendships, relationships, memorable life experiences, broadened tastes and knowledge of niche creative works that truly spoke to me. And now, look: The Computer is ultra portable! Always online!! It's in my pocket!!!
I really did enjoy this, for quite a long time. I was wary about overuse, but seeing a steady social acceptance of portable computer use among friends and lovers, I succumbed to it myself, enjoying Twitter's main characters and trading and speculating in the long- and short-term stocks of the meme market. The Internet was still mine, and while it had changed form from the heady days of teenagers explaining to each what a "manga" is to much ^_^ing, that's just the forward march of progress, and it's also just ageing. Most people I grew up around were (and still are) around in some form, after all.
I really thought my stubborn optimism could last, and you know - I still think it could have. But over the past few years, accelerated quite dramatically over the past couple of years, I feel like I've become unmoored from the evolution of computer technology and how we interact, how we play, how we connect and how we thrive.
Over these past few years it's been clear to me that there's one central culprit, and that is the force of capital, and its whims and its demand for more. Obviously, this is an extremely normalised theory of the current state of technology and especially the Internet lately, and I imagine the vast majority of the 3 people reading this will take this as a given. My issue is that I feel like my past is defined by being an Internet Person, being online, growing up where the written word takes precedence, and I'm able to form my words at a pace that allows me to express myself more readily. Now, the current state of the Internet at large has left me feeling like I have two different directions ahead of me, to either embrace fully or manage a healthy balance:
Carve a space for myself within the confines of technology that takes the forms that I enjoy. This could range from games consoles that can be comfortably played offline, to music formats that don't require my to download some anonymous heroine's DRM-stripping software to enjoy something that is mine, to open source alternatives of popular chatting apps I have the mental bandwidth to handle. Or,
Just become an Offline Person. I've been increasingly Offline over the past couple of years, and I don't know if it's something I can or want to handle, really. It brings back memories of a childhood before both myself and the cultural zeitgeist of the late 90s/early 00s could persuade my parents to get the Internet, or a game console. My main memories are those of isolation, boredom and loneliness. I had friends that I spent time socialising with, but would inevitably be shunned after some period of time. I'd lie awake at night, regularly struggling to sleep because my mind was alert, racing, full of colours, and conversations, and possibilities because I hadn't figured out I need some form of aural sensory stimulation to funnel my train of thought down onto a single, linear set of train tracks. I do not want this.
Now I don't want to come across as too extreme, or to be exaggerating the position I'm in. I use Discord regularly and catch up with friends on chat apps. I really enjoy some indie games and taking a click on some memes that stab me at exactly the right angle. Everything else has gone at this point. Initially, reducing notifications on my phone followed by deleting social media apps folowed by my social media accounts was a great and noticable buff to my mental health. But I'm still painfully aware of what the Internet is now, and where it's going; dominated by towering digital glass skyscrapers by people who cannot fathom of a social and economic system in which it's not simply enough to enjoy and nurture a good thing that you already have.
I think of today's Internet and I do not feel any fondness, not anymore. In the early days of nascent LLMs and even the chatbots, I harbored some optimism even then. What does humanity look like when we mould, master and regulate these systems to our benefit? My imagination raced to farflung futures and alternate ways of integrating our thoughts, time and even our humanity into an increasingly digital and automated future.
But what we ultimately have now is just a sea of attention-demanding dreck which serves to benefit the villainously rich, and the delusions of people who have the political and social inclinations that this is OK, and good actually, so please like and share this opinion.
I've drastically reduced my mental overhead of this Attention Hell via my notifications, and my online presence in general, but recently it's not been helping. The current state of the Internet makes it difficult for me to engage with it, and to communicate as much as I want to. It depresses me: I have so many thoughts, feelings and words and yet I struggle to formulate 97% of it to the people I love and have surrounded myself with, struggling to input it on my keyboard into crisp, off-white 4K text on pitch HDR black.
These days, I get more satisfaction from just stimming on my keyboard - a friendly mushy-yet-reactive silent tactile set of spring-loaded mechanisms that give me physical joy - than I do using the PC for its intended purpose. (I understand I've always been driven to complete the video games I play via a series of postitive feedback loops, objectives and design, but I think one main reason I have played them all these decades is the satisfying click-clack, tip-tap of game controllers).
And that's what I've been driven to think more and more recently: that I'm a human being; that we're all human beings and we're losing sight of that among our ever-connected loneliness. I'm increasingly unable to bear the sight of the Internet now that the world is so poisoned by it, and all I truly want to do is eat, drink, laugh, cry, argue, share stories, play music, dance, carve, craft, feel, cuddle, love, survive, teach, build, play games, struggle, live, die.
This is possible in harmony with technology, though. It just feels so far gone, thanks to the capitalists who have turned it into a slop-filled, algorithm-driven, emotionally manipulative machine that profits not (only) from what they can sell you but how long they can get you to keep your eyes on them, and how much they can keep you in your state of fervor.
I want to love it here. There really is so much to love, and yet I hate it. I hope that one day, soon even, I can define and carve a technological space for myself that works for me, that feels comfortable and mesmerising and joyful, that encourages and demands I share and express myself, and that whatever I do, there's a satisfying click-clack-thunk to it.