alt Hacker NewsBack in the day, when you went onto the internet, you exited the Real World and went into the Internet World. I remember when like, there was one internet-connected device in the household, it was a computer with a keyboard that you sat down on. And it worked like you would "log on" to AOL instant messenger, and then when you "logged out" you'd have an "away message" that would indicate that you were offline, living your life, IRL. How quaint, right? You'd never have an "away message" nowadays -- you're never "away"!
These millenial terms of art have almost entirely disappeared. When's the last time you heard IRL?
Now, you (the general 'you', I mean, who spend 5-7 hours a day on social media) are always online. So when you log off, you're entering the Offline World, where you have to do some stupid BS that is totally boring and unstimulating. You wait to log on to figure out what happened in the Internet World, which actually has inserted itself and taken place of the Real World. Before, the important stuff, socially, culturally, politically, happened offline. Now, it's inverted; the important stuff socially, culturally, and politically, is happening online.
Unfortunately, this happened without any of us consenting or really knowing that it was happening. And like, parent comment put it perfectly: it's a simulacra of reality, with deeply bizarre/non-human scale rules, some explicitly built (algorithms, content policies, video filters etc.) and some totally implicit (viral behavior, memes, misinformation, AI).
The AI thing is also fucking crazy and it's happening in the Internet World. Y'all ain't seen nothing yet. It will get so much weirder. imho, it's horrific. The internet is like an alien facehugger for your mind, it will just totally fuck you up; the more you use it, the more mentally fucked up you will get. Most people have the alien facehugger totally strapped to their face and they don't even know it.
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Totally with you on the facehugger thing.
The way I think of it is in the early 2000's you used the internet, but now you have to take care that the internet is not using you.
BTW. how do you explain this without invoking 'back in the day'? I sound like a retiree!
This is a cool perspective. I never really considered that there were that many people for whom there's no difference between Internet Life and Real Life. We used to call these people "chronically online." To me, Internet is still something I sit down to deliberately do. I don't carry my phone around with me unless I plan to use it for something. Otherwise it sits in a drawer (and often has no battery left by the time I get around to needing it for something).
Nothing that happens on the Internet really affects my life. Someone could be flaming me on Twitter right now, and I don't know and don't care, and it will never reach into my real life. When I log off for the day and someone replies to this thread telling me I'm wrong, I won't know it until tomorrow morning when I log back in, and it won't have affected my sleep or anything. You can still keep Internet and IRL separate.
> These millenial terms of art have almost entirely disappeared. When's the last time you heard IRL?
Pretty recently. I use IRL plenty! Terms like LOL are also fairly alive.
Anyways, your comment is quite insightful.
It was even called cyberspace.
I feel like cyberspace was never meant to use your real name and identity. The entire point was that you were free from the constraints of the real world to be something else.
Cyberspace is still alive and well though at the individual level. The only social media I have is twitter with no followers and I have never posted anything. I don't cultivate any kind of online "brand" of my real world self. My twitter is basically an art machine that shows me wonderful works of art. Even the slightest mention of political nonsense, I block the sender no matter who it is.
Society is a lost cause in this regard but the individual can still enter cyberspace if they want to.
The real lost cause is even the word "simulation" is lost to a science fiction computer internet fantasy as opposed to the process of creating and sustaining simulacra like most people are spending their lives doing on social media.