Please change to "Following" and its equivalents on everything you have. You'll never know when you accidentally show your mom a Chinese construction accident.
It's a little dire outside.
I think I can see it all around me. You probably can as well. There's an air to it all. Not uneasiness, or paranoia, actually-- anything really-- there's no air of anything. I tricked you. The world's a little dead right now, and it's been dead for 5 odd years; even comprehending that it's been that long hurts my head, but it's pretty obvious why that'd be the case the moment you step back and think for a little.
You know it's that god damn phone.
More specifically, technology's predisposition psychologically to seemingly "speed up" time. Pair this with our largest social media apps, which implement honest to God some of the most horrifying algorithms imaginable (we all affectionately call this gestalt "The Algorithm", but it's better described as a massive black box who's capability is a mystery even to its creators), and you find your days disappearing attached to the computer. It's by design-- but not particularly horrifying-- it's to be expected, if anything. No """development""" in technology, particularly social media, should really surprise you anymore. It's designed as a commodity first, with its function coming second. You want Twitter to work? You want it to stop showing you Konata's big chubby belly on your algorithmically-dictated "For You" page with your brightness all the way up on public transport? You're not gonna get that, because it's your frustration exactly that'll keep you coming onto the platform. You'd be pleased to know that I asked that second rhetorical to contrast an overwhelming negative with an overwhelming positive. Very convenient when it's about time to jerk off on public transport (megasauke reference). Fans of the i_ai_r blog would be in favor of Konata eating more and making her fat belly get even bigger. Buuurrrppp. Lol. Get fatter.
Please change to "Following" and its equivalents on everything you have. You'll never know when you accidentally show your mom a Chinese construction accident.
Is this desensitization to some abhorrent shit, alongside being unconsensually introduced to some abhorrent people, all things considered, addictive? Yes. Is it fun regardless? Yeah, that too. In a way that's where the problem lies, but that's not my conversation to have. We're here to talk about the societal effects of overexposure to the internet! We're serious in this bitch! Which is why I think the EFF should lobby the highest caliber of American politics to draft and vote in favor of an executive order that will order the deportation of Elon Musk back to South Africa to then get sodomized on live television. This is about Twitter again, by the way.
Having been terminally online for a while now, I've been able to observe the "political climate" of the website from about 2018 to present. They're damn near unrecognizable. Then, it very simply could be described as the platform acting in accordance with the zeitgeist. Simply put, Jack did a fucking horrible job hiding his political biases, especially following the 2020 election, which then allowed one of the most consequential events in the history of the United States to occur. Elon Musk bought the platform. At first, it was viewed as a way of eliminating said biases and creating an "internet town square" which put the American ideal of "freeze peach" into full effect. One could see the slope's condensation from 3 years away. We all slipped and fell regardless and now we're here. I want to go back.
Most people still don't have Twitter. Simply put. But Elon Musk owns it now, and he's the richest man in the world. He's also adddicted to ketamine and sperm donations, so logically he hasn't stopped tweeting for any more than 4 hours in a hell of a long time. What I'm trying to say is that he's copying me. What I'm actually trying to say is "Jesus Christ, this guy also basically runs the fucking government now". As a result, Twitter no longer follows the zeitgeist, or even the political biases of any one owner who too follows it, but rather Twitter is the zeitgeist. As a result, there's now a growing cabal of people (Indians included), very convincingly one-shotted by wide spread internet exposure, accepting the fascist political views of the richest man on Earth at face value. His greatest supporter's voices are also boosted regardless if they pay for "X Premium". They can also say faggot without getting smited too. The effects of these politics, alongside the bog-standard brainrot being pushed are seeping en masse into the government and society as a whole.
Now back to what I was actually talking about. How'd all of this shit "kill" the outside world?
Well, it didn't. It's moreso a product of many collectively determining that the internet was a better source of comfort than the outside world. Modern society very evidently needs a caste of people exactly like this, but they need to be viscerally conscious of exactly who they are. You may see them as weird losers in your own rites, but I see them on the cutting edge of the avant-garde. The brave men who cum on anime figures operate on a different wavelength than the rest of civilized society. The issue then arises when civilized society inadvertedly tries to converge towards it. That's to say, we're just online for everything now. Thank the pandemic for that. This behavior became socially acceptible for a year, and that's all we collectively adopted the "ease" of communication outside of necessity. This ease, in turn, became necessity. I've seen casual public spaces an already low-density suburban area diminish in usage gradually. Since then, I've moved to a decently-sized college town. Nice and walkable. I asked myself rather briefly how these observations would apply in a drastically different environment.
It still does, to an extent.
The effects of constant internet usage reign supreme on the basis that everyone knows about every joke we tell. It's a little weird, there's even a bit of camaraderie in that. But that's about where it ends. We all got our heads buried in that fucking computer, first and foremost, and camaraderie can't really be found in a meaningful form in passing. We all have our different schedules. You need to try and join a club for that... except something feels wrong with that too. It all feels distinctly cliquey. How can you "join" when you never feel like you're in in the first place? We've reduced the scope in which we operated in order to maximize personal comfort, much like what one would do on social media or a shitty public Discord server. Granted, I feel like there are some very prevalent biases in my observation. From age 13 to 16, I was constantly on the move with my family from house to house, switching schools every time alongside it. I remember there being a lot of groups of people who've been friends for pretty much their entire life. University isn't as "localized" as anything like that, so maybe it's just these tendencies I've been accustomed to coming back to bite me whenever the question of any sort of meaningful social interaction pops up. To which I am completely at fault lol. But when things appear to be the way they are, it makes it all the more harder to break in.
I know damn well I'm not alone when I think this.
How can we convene if we're buried on a screen in public? We've rid ourselves of normal social signals and now we must all bear the consequences of it. I think we may have irreversibly fucked up. What if we never just came in eachother? Oh yeah and uh fuck dating apps by the way. I think I might have a thought disorder.