sharing on the internet

it's nuanced.

this is the first thought I'm sharing on the internet but not on a major social media platform. intentionally.

over the last few years I have spent a lot of time thinking and reading and writing, and the two major concepts I always seem to find my way back to is love, or radical acceptance of self and others, and presence. being able to be fully in a moment mentally and physically. embodying yourself and using all of your senses to take in what's happening around you without splitting your mind into what could happen tomorrow, what happened last year, or what a person across town is thinking about now. beautiful because they are pretty simple concepts, frustrating because they are life long practices, annoying because you can usually find a way to answer most questions with those ideas. a little frightening because the more you open yourself up to acceptance of people and the world the more you are pulling yourself in to the present, accepting people and events as-is right now. and you are not only experiencing the miracle and joy of life but you also begin to truly witness and acknowledge the despair and pain being inflicted.

the deeper I dive into those different thoughts the more I began to think about our major social media platforms operating as almost the antithesis of love and presence. Sharing thoughts on substack was convenient, but it also has an algorithm, an infinite scrolling feed, reader metrics, and is moving towards short form video content. I'm grateful for what I learned while sharing there, but it is the opposite of what I believe. I found myself spending more and more time staring at a phone screen, scrolling on an algorithm, and the content I was being shown was looking more and more the same. creating the same type of echo chambers that exist on other platforms. the writing and ideas I was being served were beautiful and interesting, but I couldn't help think about how much time was being spent there writing and reading and scrolling and optimizing versus actually out in the world putting these ideas into action. and I have no way of knowing what those writers do or don't do in their actual life, but I didn't like spending my time on my phone, and I wanted to take what I had learned over the last few years off of a feed and into reality.

so sharing on the internet is nuanced, as are most things in life. I know there's a lot of really good things people have gained from connecting online, people make livings, have found community, and share ideas. I just wish the main places we venture online weren't owned by people actively working to destroy the world, because in my mind it castes such a huge dark shadow over all the potential good that can come from connection. turning the promise of learning and community into a trojan horse of addiction to escapism and isolation.

the short form videos, photo based infinite scrolls, has exploded a human tendency to think about how we appear to the outside world. making us voyeurs of our own lives, self policing our every decision with a little voice that's always thinking about how to package an experience so it can be boxed up and shared via a phone screen. guiding our decision making through how we may be perceived by outside eyes. immediately splitting our relationship with reality, and removing us from the present. our reality and life become what's captured on the screen, what the feed shows, curated, perfected imperfection. dependent on people and ourselves viewing it, acknowledging it, in order to make it real and worthy. I loved looking at my own instagram feed, it was beautiful, and it made me feel like my life was beautiful. but I was looking at my life through a screen. As much as I thought I was reliving a moment, I was not reliving moments, I was admiring the type of person this feed portrays. and vis versa, taking pictures knowing they are destined to live in a feed or in a story and being excited about a beautiful square to stare at, excited about being perceived in the future, instead of fully being present living in the moment.

And in order to get eyes on posts, one usually has to play into the algorithm at least a little bit. making the algorithm the final boss in determining what is worthy of being pushed to audiences. I can't get my mind away from knowing who controls the algorithms, because they're truly the worst people in the world. and they effectively become that little guiding voice behind decisions made so they can be posted.

socials have been on my mind recently because of leaving substack but also because there have been some pretty prominent influencers coming out and disavowing or defecting from the niches they've been operating in online. putting out statements and interviews saying stuff like the persona performed on social media is just a character, not really who they are, not really the way they live their life. and it's just incredibly frustrating to hear. especially after these influencers have amassed tens of millions of followers. does their audience know it's just a character? was that ever disclosed? how old is the majority of the audience watching this content? and does that content appear like true life, aspirational ways to live?

and it just really made me think again about these separate realities we've created and operate in. moving back and forth between what's real and what's on the feed, the performative highlight reel. we do it pretty seamlessly now. Part of me thinks older generations that grew up or experienced formative years without the internet being the center of the world, either before it existed or it existed in limited dedicated spaces, have an easier time balancing the real with the online. because we were shaped in a world based in reality. we have a deep understanding of reality just by virtue of when we were born, we had the time to form an understanding of the separation. making it easier to look at an influencer and have a pretty natural understanding that what we see on the phone is not real. it's performative. even the 'authentic' influencers. they are still performing authenticity because they know there is a camera and that it will be posted for people to watch.

this makes me wonder about people younger than me, children growing up in this world of many realities, some spending hours a day watching those simulated life experiences through a screen. not developing that innate sense of presence, of being grounded in the real world and with themselves, because that is not how people spend their time anymore. I can start to see and understand panic people had about watching television way back when, but I think television still had an element of fantasy or distance between real life and make believe. So these big influencers coming out and saying "clearly it's a performance" makes me wonder if young people watching them know that.

This muddying of reality and unrealities is generally why I think people will say stuff like life feels duller or emptier or faster than it use to. and it comes back to us not being fully present to experience anything anymore. we've split and then blurred our realities between what's actually happening around us, how can we shape what's happening so that it can be easily captured on camera and shared or replicated, and how it will be perceived. our mind trying to hold all of those at once at any given time, means that we aren't fully experiencing the present. and the online world is slowly creeping out and consuming our real life experiences and spaces too. with restaurants and events shaping their whole identity, decor, and brand around getting good pics for the feeds. You can see it in individuals too at live concerts or sporting events or at the park with a screen between their eyes and what's actually happening in front of them. saving it for the future, but diminishing and removing themselves from the lived experience now.

the world feels dull because we aren't experiencing it anymore. we're capturing it, packaging it, shrinking it, flattening it, to see it on a phone. making lives to be watched, to be consumed, to be perceived, instead of lived. And I wonder about people born into a world where these multiple realities reign supreme, a world where even the adults spend time in their screens, why would these new people ever think something more real and beautiful exists if all they see modeled is people invested in socials and not in the sky, stars, and sun?