Inverted Hedgehog

Modern human’s attention has become nomadic. We are mentally flip-flopping from one information grinder to another while sailing on an infinite transistor-simulated sea polluted with server trash.

One doesn’t need to be especially perceptive to see that faux-reality of social media is taking over natural constants. As internet popularity started to grow in the early aughts, so did suicidal tendencies. Between the year 2000. and 2022. suicide rates have grown 37%. There are also researches of direct correlation between social networks and self-harm. I’ll leave this analysis to much smarter than I am, but it does imply that our society is now a hybrid of physical and digital realms, both equally (un)real. We created It and It can kill us.

My experimentation with Instagram was fairly disheartening. I was there, trying to post sentimental and (potentially really bad) attempts at humor and at some point a friend of mine told me that I’m doing Instagram wrong. Everything posted there is not really real, she said, it just looks that way. Me being transparent was not interesting and it’s not what people there are searching for, it being too boring to provide any value. It’s all one big horror vacui of fake realities and polished perceptions.

This is probably a normal flow of things, considering that real life is kinda boring. We are all stuck in our established routines full of mundane tasks and chores, going through a day-in-day-out life with only a 1/3 of our total time being available to us; and even that time is so limited that it’s frowned upon to just slack off within that small time frame. All we do is recursively trying to make our lives better while simultaneously forgetting to live one.

It became easier to just disappear and let our avatars take over and do their thing. It’s an escape, the only one we are seemingly offered in a world dominated by capitalist philosophies.

How can art even survive in this kind of environment? Art was always a tool for introspection, a way for us to broaden our horizons through empathy and understanding. It allowed us to see what our collective consciousness can produce.

But with our mindset switching to escapistic tendencies, it’s no wonder that everything right now is revolving around raw entertainment. The less we are ourselves, the better. The less the physical feels real, the less we need to acknowledge it.

Maybe there’s no solution to this problem, but what remains of art is still fighting for our souls. A cathedral we built of false optics will hopefully one day crumble down in a glorious fashion. Then, maybe, everyone will start coughing out all that holy dust that accumulated in our lungs.