Need to Broadcast
“Yesterday I kept my doings to myself. No urge to share them with the ether, no need of faraway communion or approval. I thought things, I did things, I lived life without broadcast. One day without worrying about the social efficacy of my doings in digital space. All the information I need to know is already here, in front of me.”
Have you felt this way?
Followers in present-day social media are cultivated by selectively sharing aspects of your life. So much for individualism when the result is people still scramble for communion in all the wrong places, looking for artificial resonance with the world in digital environs. The call is strong. Social media is too inviting, for people feeling lonely, tempting even for those capable of finding resonance with people in Real proximity. Loneliness in your doings (by way of interests, profession, place, status...) pressures you into looking for community in digital environs and strange places.
How do you become lonely in your doings? — When they don't serve the people around you. Question becomes: Using Digital Environs, how to augment local space without polluting it with faraway space? Using Digital Environs, how to augment local dynamics without polluting them with faraway dynamics? How to help local dynamics blossom without hybridizing them with similar faraway dynamics? Such hybridization makes it harder for interactions in-the-flesh to emerge from digital interactions. Hybridized digital dynamics, turned national or global, exert more pull than local in-the-flesh dynamics.
As our doings move online — as they become more digital and less physical — the need grows for us to socialize, share, and co-experience with others in digital environments. When taken to the limit, it's counterproductive. Digital becomes the primary space of creation and physical becomes a place of mere consumption.
Our = You, Me, The People You Care About
✎ Connection to