THIS DESERVES AOTD. Such a mind-bending read, reflecting what life online is doing to 8 different individuals psychologies.
My physical body no longer feels like the “center of gravity” of my identity… my sense of presence is forever fractured and distributed all over the place. I close my eyes and imagine all the screens that are displaying my content at this very moment, I wonder about the total number of pixels I currently occupy, I feel like I am nowhere and also everywhere.
Thinking in terms of the online interactions I have interconnected all throughout the web... the various forums I am a part of, both active and inactive social media accounts I have, random YouTube comments I have placed... and the cycle continues. It's everywhere.
One time I forgot to sign out of YouTube on my parents' Apple TV and after a few days realized they’d been screwing up my recommendations. It was the worst… my whole feed was basically just ‘80s music videos, and it took weeks to flush them all out.
But nowadays my internal monologue speaks tweet by default. Thoughts bubble up from the depths of my psyche readymade for the timeline, already twisted into the pre-programmed shape of a Post. I wonder if the algorithm is starting to interfere with the way my subconscious works. What if it’s filtering out thoughts that it doesn’t think will perform well online? Every day, thousands of strangers upload little slices of their consciousness directly into my mind. My concern is that I’m prone to mistake their thoughts for my own — that some part of me believes I’m only hearing myself think. Sometimes when I wake up in the morning, I’ll scroll through my old posts just to remind myself of myself. It feels like looking in the mirror. I’m swallowing my (digital) self so that I’m me instead of someone else.
Old: You are the average of your 5 closest friends. New: You are an average of the 50 people you follow online and whose opinions you have invited into your head. Be careful of who you let in to your head. -- 30 tips by Manas J. Saloi
THIS DESERVES AOTD. Such a mind-bending read, reflecting what life online is doing to 8 different individuals psychologies.
Thinking in terms of the online interactions I have interconnected all throughout the web... the various forums I am a part of, both active and inactive social media accounts I have, random YouTube comments I have placed... and the cycle continues. It's everywhere.
THE WORST! (lol)
👍
Really resonated the most, personally, of each of the vignettes.
The perils of algorithm!
Old: You are the average of your 5 closest friends. New: You are an average of the 50 people you follow online and whose opinions you have invited into your head. Be careful of who you let in to your head. -- 30 tips by Manas J. Saloi