An Act of Rebellion

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

Blaise Pascal

Pardon my cadence, but I’ve stopped caring about the mouth-breathing morons spouting their putrid nonsense in the hopes of getting attention in our overly-abundant world.

Algorithms have hijacked our collective attention (among many other environmental factors), forcing a race to the bottom of the gene pool in the hopes that we can all swim there. I have refrained, for almost a year, from adding any more noise into this black hole and focused on just living my own life.

There was a time when depth, nuance and careful consideration were applauded. When intelligent conversation was the goal for the public sphere, leaving the rest to social get togethers or the inane ramblings of a minority of people that we could casually ignore.

However, it is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

Attention-seeking behaviour, regardless of how idiotic it may be, is now rewarded. It’s rewarded in (fake) social validation, which may prove financially viable if it goes far enough. It’s now “cool” or “fun” to be a troll in real life because doing something that might actually contribute something to your community doesn’t feed the narcissistic values the Internet now thrives on.

It is also exasperated by new tools that can present any narrative someone chooses and hell, it doesn’t even have to be true. Just compelling.

BUT—it all looks the same and it’s flooding our senses.

• Most social media posts are now the same variations of AI slop.
• Bots fill the comment sections.
• Video is being replaced by “clips.”
• The goal is to elicit anger (“ragebait”)
• Philosophies that used to defend against this are being simplified and commodified (Stoicism, I’m looking at you!)
• Movies and shows are now being written with the assumption the audience is distracted, eliminating any chance of immersion.

The list keeps going and at the sake of sounding like an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn, I’m writing this because I see a backlash and I want to amplify it in my own way.

People across all generations are sick of it, but you don’t hear about it. After all, it doesn’t serve the commercial interests of those who have weaponized this mess to spread the word.

Thus, it is time to declare an act of rebellion.

While the obvious choice is the proverbial “cabin in the woods,” let’s take a more realistic approach. After all, there’s barely any woods to build a cabin in and we don’t need to throw out the baby with the bath water (that whole nuance thing I mentioned).

The act of rebellion is simple to understand, but painfully difficult to execute:

Slow down and quiet down.

Slow down: seek the longer path, ignore the shortcuts, spend more time thinking, planning, conversing, resisting the instant gratification and need to react right away.

Quiet down: let your mind be bored, forcing it to cry out to you until it gives up lets you be while avoiding the spaces that fill it with noise.

Oh, and one more thing…

assume everything you see, hear and read today is utter bullshit until proven otherwise.