Part 3 –
“Everything, All The Time”
Eagles, Life In the Fast Lane
In Part 2 we discussed the real human toll of our digital lives. Today we’ll be looking at the main behavior we deploy to handle the tsunami…or whatever word you’d like to choose… of digital media, and how that human behavior drives our digital addictions.
But first, a quick story….
At the 9th mile of a run on a hot and humid morning, your brain starts making weird connections. The song “Seek & Destroy” by Metallica was pumping through my ears, when I recalled a recent story about a 100% successful cancer drug trial that manipulates the body’s immune system to mount a targeted and intensified attack on abnormal ( in this trial, rectal cancer) cells. While hearing James Hetfield scream “Seaaaarchiiiiinnnnn…. SEEK AND DESTROY” from their 1983 classic, the mental image of a mob of immune cells, growing, and eliminating what they have been programmed to strike, just wouldn’t go away. Immunotherapy is showing a lot of promise in fighting the big “C”. But it’s proven a very delicate balance – get the drug wrong, then the body starts attacking healthy cells. No good. When the body’s immune cells are mistaken, and mobilize to rid itself of cells, tissue, and organ that aren’t harmful ( and even necessary) this is called an Auto-immune state.
Another connection was made by my dew point soaked gray matter… it’s often said that our current culture is like a virus. Spreading from person to person. I disagree. It’s more like an auto-immune disease, destroying itself and proliferating from the inside. A virus gets to you from the outside, but our current problems – we’re creating them ( & in the process destroying) ourselves.
Are humans becoming an Auto-immune disease? I was thinking of this question and could come up with plenty of arguments to support a “yes” answer.
Afterall, what is “cancel culture” if not a killer cell that is alerted to a threat ( a tweet being taken out of context for instance), then recruits other cells to join the fight ( a growing online mob), then overwhelms the perceived threat by consistent attacks to the point of incapacity ( like forcing someone to resign, be fired, light their business on fire, or even shoot them)?
With life shifting online and content exploding at exponential rates, there are no shortage of “threats” perceived by the self-anointed &righteous digital immune cells. Sometimes they get the attack correct, purging the truly harmful from the body. However, they’ve been so active, …overactive…, that these cells have turned on their own body. ( Often by way of creating a scapegoat via constantly moving the line of what’s acceptable in their orthodoxy). They see “enemies” even where they are not – creating a human race in an Auto-Immune disease state.
How This Happened:
With the average human interacting with digital media some 11 hrs every day and touching their phone 2,617 times – the amount of information taken in during that time frame is more than our ancestors by 1000 fold. We’re not built for this- not the torrent.
But we clearly don’t WANT to stop the constant flow. Hell, most people can’t get through a stoplight without staring down at their phone. One would think during the COVID-19 pandemic, that with fewer cars on the road, that there would be less accidents. That wasn’t the case. It got worse. So, if you think people are worse drivers than they used to be, you’re not dreaming it. That’s how addicted we’ve become.
There are 500 Million + Tweets per day. 350 million photo posts on Facebook. 1.8 billion daily active TikTok users. 2.7 billion video views daily on YouTube. 4.2 billion likes per day of Instagram posts., 370 billion emails. 6 billion text messages sent.
Here’s the thing- we aren’t even digital toddlers. If we are speaking frankly, we are digital newborns with poor APGAR scores. We don’t know how to handle this technological life. We went 2.5 million years WITHOUT our days being digitized; no wonder we don’t know how to deal with it.
Doctors are reporting that young women have developed “ticks” due to the fast cut twitches of TikTok. Their eyes take in the sharp movements of these videos all day and their bodies copy the action. And the younger that humans are introduced to it, the more it’s going to become ingrained into motor patterns. Imagine the toll on the neuro muscular system from young childhood and what this entails for their 80 yr old selves. All of this is so novel to the human brain, that our bodies don’t know how handle it.
To try and make sense of the deluge of information and content being blasted at us as fast as our computer chips can process, we’ve resorted to the very thing we’ve all done since birth. The thing that allows us to point, speak, walk, wear clothing, function in a group. We do it subconsciously or consciously almost all day everyday – we use mimicry to cope.
Very recently, humans went from having our behavioral models revolve around a set of people (150 at most usually, of family, friends, co-workers), some print media and a handful of TV networks. Once these sites came online, everyone in the world became a model to emulate. And we are most definitely emulating…..
They are referred to and refer to themselves as “influencers” for a reason. Before we process the question of “do I actually care about this?”, our mimicking minds kick in and start repeating what we’ve seen or heard.
For example….
“I did a thing”, “All the things”, “Real recognize real”, “SZN” ( * why does social media culture HATE vowels??!!). “Drip”, “epic”, “beast[AH1] “, ( & it’s accompanying mode), “Those ‘blank’ though.’ “—- Just hits different.”, “peep this fit.” & of course “vibin’”, ….. or whatever terms & phrases that never get spoken in person while you’re “living your best life.” In our attempts to sound relevant online, we haven’t noticed that this language has all staying power and freshness of shrimp left out in the Sun. Our brains get hi-jacked into these mimicking patterns without giving any thought to “do I actually say, think, or believe ANY of these things?”
But here’s the major issue- these online mimicking sessions, have become people’s identity. Whether it’s a TikTok dance, the aforementioned picture of a thong draped posterior on Instagram from part 1, the re-sharing of the million times already shared meme, this model of emulation is so ingrained into the psyche, that to deviate from it … would mean to “destroy” themselves. Destroying yourself is wisely programmed against in our DNA, but with the 11+ hours of usage per day, and our capacity to think for ourselves eroding, destroying ourselves is exactly what we’re doing anyway.
We aren’t just changing and emulating the language – we signal our shared victimhood of the day or hour, and put it on for all to see, lest we be “left out.” If there was a cute app that changed your profile picture into a chalk drawing there will always be a large contingency of folks that will go along with it. Profile draped in flag of support of Ukraine while doing absolute (and less than) zero to help said country?
But the contagion of mimicry doesn’t stop with harmless hypocrisy. (like thinking you’re changing the world by changing your profile pic). Unfortunately, the copy-cats spill out into the streets and have real world consequences from destroying culture to destroying each other.
“Immune Cells” Getting it Wrong: A recent example that illustrates this phenomenon. Symphony orchestras around the US decided to not play Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture” during July 4th celebrations, due to the composer being Russian. The song, also was NOT written about the US’ war in 1812, but the Russians withstanding an invasion from an aggressive Napoleon; a striking and ironic role reversal of what’s going on today with Russia being the aggressor to Ukraine. At an annual U.S. Independence Day event my family and I attend with lovely friends of ours, the local orchestra announced that the traditional closing piece of the 1812 Overture would not be played that evening. A crowd favorite, we wouldn’t hear the Howizters blasting as the song crescendos into glory. When the orchestra director announced that the song wouldn’t be played due to it’s Russian connection, and “sensitivity”, many in the crowd cheered in support; an act of mimicry. The Orchestra was imitating what many symphonies across the country had done by purposely omitting the song from their performance.
BUT …. Did they ever stop and think, that this song, which has come to have a different meaning, wasn’t emboldening the Russians? Where does it stop; do we throw out Anna Karenina too because Dostoevsky was Russian? This song being played wasn’t contributing to Putin’s War Machine…. What was however, was all of the “Patriotic” trinkets, flags, chairs, clothing, and the about to be seen fireworks that were made in China… a country who has increased their imports of Russian oil by 55% in May of ’22, a record. China IS funding Putin’s War Machine. Not the 1812 Overture. We fall for these seemingly small emotional, but ultimately hypocritical actions almost daily. But with the scale and reach of social media, and human’s desire to be accepted and penchant for mimicry, these acts of hypocrisy are no longer small, and have real World consequences – like funding Wars you don’t actually support, and the killing of a country’s civilians whose flag adorns your profile picture.
*( I also wonder if Russia is still occupying Ukraine at Xmas time, if the Nutcracker, also written by Tchaikovsky, will not be played and performed….something tells me when it comes to $ on the line, that our preoccupation with “sensitivity” will dissipate…)
Mimicry isn’t all bad. You’re seeing these words and understanding them because of it. You were likely taught in a classroom setting with other people your age to be able to read and comprehend a common language via imitation. Companies sell amazing products due to the desire to have what others have. We are able to sell great books through word of mouth. Maybe you’ll share this article if you think it’s worth it. But imitation also has it’s dark side. Q’Anon, Woke Doctrine, rioters, and Taylor Swift fans being prime examples. It is a wonder why humans will work themselves to the bone in a job they despise so they can buy the same house, car, as the people in their orbit whom they also don’t like. People put themselves in debt and ruin their lives with impulsive decisions ( Like buying GameStop stock) to follow the crowd, hoping to buy and show off totems of success that they believe will bring them happiness, but it never does…..
We’ll explore that topic more in part 4 – how social media keeps us wanting & wanting, and what to do about it.
“It is not the man who has too little, but the man who craves more, that is poor”
Seneca
Andrew L Hamilton 