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11 August 2021 14:05I'm vegetarian and aspiring vegan, and I also don't drink alcohol; so I'm definitely familiar with a dynamic that goes like...you mention offhand about a decision you've made, for example, saying "ill just have an orange juice" at a pub, and out of bloody nowhere there's this wall of insecure defensiveness as if you've just said "if you so much as think about the devils drink you are among the damned; and the only reason I drink soft drinks in public is to spite you". & like, I can't tell you how often this dynamic happens - often subtley.
So I recognise this setting in whenever I start trying to talk about the internet, and try to have compassion for it but it's hard.
I struggle to communicate online, for various brainweird reasons, and when I try and explain this people here "internet relationships are fake and invalid". But it's not that, only that an online relationship cannot fully satisfy me. Jfc I want to sit in a room with my friends, something that hasn't bloody happened for a decade.
The architecture of the internet imposes harmful dynamics on the way we interact with one another, and that's a meaningful problem to me; like, what does it mean when your social life is mediated through an advertising company who profits from argument and outrage, and scrapes your intimate moments in order to throw elections.
And the internet does harm to my wellbeing, so being *forced* to use it as the only conduit to others is like trapping an alcoholic in a pub.
I think too about the visual world, the tangible world. I feel ugly and I know my home to be ugly, and isn't that just a feeling being co-produced by existing in a world saturated by images. Like, my house is just an ordinary looking house; but my longing for beauty is being shaped by exposure to how much better things could be; and more insidiously, a desire to *become* an image, that to be captured and archived is its own satisfaction
& that's very 1960s isn't it, like old school politics we've all sort of outgrown, talking about how television advertisements are selling a lifestyle. But it's no less true, just more insidious for the fact it's no longer cool to critique it, and we're all complicit in creating it. It's one reason why I prefer not to photograph my practice; a very fuzzy border between documenting and sharing, vs advertising and branding, and ultimately that attitude of wanting things to be photographable so they have value. Like what would it mean to have an ugly altar. Just, the pits. Maybe we should embrace the spiritual merit of that, seeing as we don't live in a catalogue.
I go offline, or try to, and the impact on my mental health is transcendental. But the level of escalating panic that immediately kicks in because nobody is here. Nobody is ever here. Everybody is at work, at home watching the telly or online. Nobody wants to come and sit in a room with me. It's definitely an environmentalist fantasy I have that, given the obscene amount of carbon consumption in the global north vs the global south, 1970s style limits on electricity use could actually be a good thing. It'd reduce consumption, freeing up consumption for nations who need to catch up their infrastructure. But in my heart, that isn't why; it's a daydream that if three days a week nobody could run a television or computer, they'd be forced by boredom to - say - come together at a pub, or a church, or a town hall or market, to be present where we are together. To return to a world in which I can participate. Like, I can barely get my husband to stay present with me. He goes online first thing at 8am and switches off at 11pm, and it's a weird sensation to be in a house with someone who is both there and not there.
What im talking about, ultimately, is not an abstract ethical judgement, but things I need to live a good life. Decisions I make for me aren't a critique of others, and neither are my longings. It's impossibly cruel to live in a world set up to exclude you.
Last night I dreamed we lived in the mountains and all my friends were there. But we were being pressured by the locals in the valley to leave because we were not wanted, and had no power to stay. But we didn't know, if we moved away, where else we could afford to live and how we could all stay together. But there we all were at a feast together, for a brief time.
So I recognise this setting in whenever I start trying to talk about the internet, and try to have compassion for it but it's hard.
I struggle to communicate online, for various brainweird reasons, and when I try and explain this people here "internet relationships are fake and invalid". But it's not that, only that an online relationship cannot fully satisfy me. Jfc I want to sit in a room with my friends, something that hasn't bloody happened for a decade.
The architecture of the internet imposes harmful dynamics on the way we interact with one another, and that's a meaningful problem to me; like, what does it mean when your social life is mediated through an advertising company who profits from argument and outrage, and scrapes your intimate moments in order to throw elections.
And the internet does harm to my wellbeing, so being *forced* to use it as the only conduit to others is like trapping an alcoholic in a pub.
I think too about the visual world, the tangible world. I feel ugly and I know my home to be ugly, and isn't that just a feeling being co-produced by existing in a world saturated by images. Like, my house is just an ordinary looking house; but my longing for beauty is being shaped by exposure to how much better things could be; and more insidiously, a desire to *become* an image, that to be captured and archived is its own satisfaction
& that's very 1960s isn't it, like old school politics we've all sort of outgrown, talking about how television advertisements are selling a lifestyle. But it's no less true, just more insidious for the fact it's no longer cool to critique it, and we're all complicit in creating it. It's one reason why I prefer not to photograph my practice; a very fuzzy border between documenting and sharing, vs advertising and branding, and ultimately that attitude of wanting things to be photographable so they have value. Like what would it mean to have an ugly altar. Just, the pits. Maybe we should embrace the spiritual merit of that, seeing as we don't live in a catalogue.
I go offline, or try to, and the impact on my mental health is transcendental. But the level of escalating panic that immediately kicks in because nobody is here. Nobody is ever here. Everybody is at work, at home watching the telly or online. Nobody wants to come and sit in a room with me. It's definitely an environmentalist fantasy I have that, given the obscene amount of carbon consumption in the global north vs the global south, 1970s style limits on electricity use could actually be a good thing. It'd reduce consumption, freeing up consumption for nations who need to catch up their infrastructure. But in my heart, that isn't why; it's a daydream that if three days a week nobody could run a television or computer, they'd be forced by boredom to - say - come together at a pub, or a church, or a town hall or market, to be present where we are together. To return to a world in which I can participate. Like, I can barely get my husband to stay present with me. He goes online first thing at 8am and switches off at 11pm, and it's a weird sensation to be in a house with someone who is both there and not there.
What im talking about, ultimately, is not an abstract ethical judgement, but things I need to live a good life. Decisions I make for me aren't a critique of others, and neither are my longings. It's impossibly cruel to live in a world set up to exclude you.
Last night I dreamed we lived in the mountains and all my friends were there. But we were being pressured by the locals in the valley to leave because we were not wanted, and had no power to stay. But we didn't know, if we moved away, where else we could afford to live and how we could all stay together. But there we all were at a feast together, for a brief time.
