looking into some early internet stuff, a guy in the 90s (prescient) said, “andy warhol was wrong. everyone doesnt want fifteen minutes of fame, soon you’ll see, they want to be famous for fifteen minutes every day”. this predicted the first wave of social media perfectly. BUT …
i think its worth noting in terms of internet ethnography that now we have crossed over into the phase after this. there is something people say on here, because its true: every day there is a main character on twitter, and your goal is to never be the main character.
the man you see above drifted into momentarily being the main character (often this is just random, not saying he did anything wrong). the interesting thing is that, we universally recognize that that is now bad. you don’t want that. its not intuitive that this would be the case
especially to someone that existed before this phenomenon. imagine going back and explaining this principle. “yeah, almost every day theres one person everyone is talking about, and you dont want to be that person”. i think that would confuse these earlier internet media people.
that sounds great, doesnt it? you went online looking for attention, and you got it. why is that bad? isnt that what everyone wants on social media? in phase one the answer to this would be yes. but now, its a firm no. you really dont want that. its a different new paradigm.
we now exist in a (internet philosophy alert) liminal space where everyone wants attention online, yet at the same time, no one wants to truly be the focus of “the attention”. so, what kind of attention do people actually want? this is an interesting question. i have an intuition
people want to be “the critic”. people dont want to be “the subject”, they want to be “the author”. this explains it quite well. they want their observations to be observed, not themselves. they want their pointing to get attention. they dont want to be pointed at.
but now, they live online. they cant escape potentially being the subject - potentially being pointed to. so all these normal people seeking attention exist in a bizarre type of game wherein they are courting attention, but they dont really want capital A attention. very messy.
and all this is very poorly defined, and no one explains it to them, no one really even understands it, we cant turn it off, and it could ruin your life, but you kind of also have no escape from it, and thats just how things are, and its been like ten years so its just normal now
unless you stamp yourself as kind of a freak and scrub all of your previous life from the internet and just wear a mask and vibe i guess which isnt really an option for any normal people because ur weird for not giving the circus access to ur SSN and daily facial scans
good luck
good luck
internet boomer moment but let the record show i fought this as much as i could
there were times in college when i didnt even have a computer. only got a smartphone when a job made me. only got normal social media when “they” made me, briefly
let the zoomers know some resisted
there were times in college when i didnt even have a computer. only got a smartphone when a job made me. only got normal social media when “they” made me, briefly
let the zoomers know some resisted
i really genuinely love the internet
its just insane to have normal people live on it
its just insane to have normal people live on it
.@bdmarotta and i talked about stuff like this on his podcast once - i really enjoyed it. check it:
youtu.be
youtu.be
Loading suggestions...