The Digital Narcissus

sufi

lala
My computer is getting quite old now, so we bought an external harddrive to back up all the data.
(As soon as i put it next to the laptop, the laptop started to develop an odd new fault of switching off without warning. What's that about?)
Although there seem to be GBs and GBs of stuff to back up, I realise that since the last time i did this, i have almost never gone back to the archives, there is nothing there i actually "need", or if there is it's a couple of important emails or documents - less that 0.01% of the total. (And the 37,000+ photos - why?)

As we spend so much time on these machines, we forget our strategies for non-digital living. I received the "Phone Book" through my letterbox last week. Digital experience supplants real life skills, there is a lazy circuit in your brain that makes it prefer to outsource functions and at the same time deletes the internal facility to do that. ie finding a plumber. it's a nightmare online. Can you still remember phone numbers from before you had a mobile phone?

The internet, unlike media previously, is an increasingly solitary activity (more than cinemas or telly), unlike books there's no physical trace of what you've been up to.

Those photos - masses and masses of them, why do we feel so compelled to snap everything? A tiny proportion might make it onto the internet or whatsapp. Why should we feel that it's necessary for us to log our experiences like this, why do we feel this perspective is so important it must be reported - the ease of creating images makes us so arrogant (and doesn't this interposing a lens between us and everything involve losing contact with life through our actual senses, or is that what we want?)

Why do we feel that we need this constant current affairs, hot updates all the time without any direct relevance to our circumstances, without any providing lever that allows us to exercise our insights or understanding, why do we accept to feel so arrogant that we need all this, why do we accept this flattery?

We don't dare ask why we seek out this drip drip of poison in our eyes, snuff and porno, hyper-mediated by people who we don't like and who don't like us. I mean previously Euro Trade Treaties were the most boringest topic known to humanity, yet now we are up in arms about it, whilst still we have the same next to zero actual understanding or knowledge about them.

We forgot how to entertain ourselves without that visceral tweak of nasty

Building up our internal personalised stores of disconnected understandings.

And as you present, display and curate your best face to the world via the internets, you receive constant positive affirmation from your selected peers (or you get ignored, so you escalate your shtick). Your online persona is presumably still you, still part of you, but increasingly it can be barely connected to your irl meatlife.
Most scarily though is how the digital realm has got in amongst the irl relationships, when we allow them to be mediated by instawhatsyerface, how they are distorted by the shadows we through up on the walls of our electronic Plato caves,

and of course this system is developing at a pace - the businesses behind it working night and day to improve the panopticon

Our main guidance on our situation now seems to come from 3 x well known "New Yorker" style 1 panel funnies
"On the internet, nobody knows you are a dog"
"I can't come to bed now, Somebody on the internet is Wrong!"
& lastly
"What if Climate Change doesn't exist and we make a better world for nothing?"

This last plaintive plea indicates our way out of here.
These tools are so powerful - we need to get them back (free open source, self-hosted, non-corporate media still exists but only just) and make them our force multiplier to kick the babylonians out of our lives on and offline, use ourpowerr to challenge the irl negativities and anti-life regimes, systems, behaviours.

The attack surface is gigantic, everybody lives and dies by their public image now, inversely related to the scale of influence.

Dig ourselves out of this pit of narcissism. The potential now exists. We are the first humans to have the tools and opportunity to achieve that.
 

sufi

lala
The search engines say that there are a already number of articles on Digital Narcissism in our human experience zeitgeist machine. I haven't read any of them. Part of this tendency is that we read a longform article or news item and assume that we understand a topic. We neither us our brains to analyse, or look at the actual human accrued human wisdom pre-internet or in the science/academia space.

The science thing is of course closely tied to this problematisation in that the internet and blunt quantitative perspectives romp upon us hand in hand. Evidence only applies if it can be found online, so edge cases and exceptions can be boosted out of proportion.
 

sufi

lala
declare digital jihad, online intifada

v surprised the pc hasn't dumped me yet and allowed me to mash out these few humble words for you all
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Those photos - masses and masses of them, why do we feel so compelled to snap everything? A tiny proportion might make it onto the internet or whatsapp. Why should we feel that it's necessary for us to log our experiences like this, why do we feel this perspective is so important it must be reported - the ease of creating images makes us so arrogant (and doesn't this interposing a lens between us and everything involve losing contact with life through our actual senses, or is that what we want?)

It is remarkable, isn't it? I'm far from 'above' this tendency myself. I think photos of other people ARE valuable - I think many of the photos I've taken of friends and family will be important to me later in life when (I hate to consider it) they're dead or gone someotherway. But photos of places, photos of paintings - I can't help it myself. It's a record for me, of what I liked. But it's also for public appreciation - creating an identity in the eyes of others.

Of course there IS narcissism in all this, but you could look at how much SHARING is involved here and think there's something actually nice about it. If not between strangers, then between friends. The internet is as much an expression of human sociability as human narcissism.

I've spilled so many words over the years on forums like this. I've got so much out of being on forums that I'd not have got from solitary contemplation or education. But I also wonder if I've spunked whatever insights or talent I might have up a dissolvable digital wall.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've certainly got a few books worth of material tossed willy nilly across this forum and hundreds of articles but at the end of the day who cares. Where does any of it get you?
 

version

Well-known member
That thing of cameras stealing your soul seems to hold true at least figuratively if you look at something like Instagram.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Do you think there is an element of anxiety propelling all this documentation?

“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”

We are more aware than ever before of our impermanence, of the climate's impermanence etc.

We want things to slow down, subconsciously, we want to pin time down.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
I blame Apple. They started it with all the "I"-Products. I fyou name that crap "I"-whatever the result HAD TO be digital narcissism.

Although I seem to remember the first I-MAc (came out 21 years ago ffs) the "I" was supposed to stand for Internet
 
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firefinga

Well-known member
Fotos shot via your smartphone = immediate oblivion, flash memories, harddrives and cloud servers full of billions of pictures that never gonna be looked at again. Only there to train AI-surveillance/recognition technology....
 

Leo

Well-known member
what a bunch of gloomy whiners! photography is interesting and enjoyable, who cares if you don't look at the images very often. So what? It entirely possible to take phone photos AND ENJOY THE REAL WORLD AROUND YOU, THE TWO ARE NOT MUTUALLY FUCKING EXCLUSIVE! I love taking shots and love going back through my photo library or Instagram and recalling the times and places.

You're all too fucking intellectually serious and important to allow yourself to enjoy life, maybe THAT's what you should be examining in your lives instead of your fucking phones and hard drives! Makes me what to go over there and kick you all in the collective ass, grab you by the shoulders and give you a good shaking. Quit being such a bunch of fucking navel-gazing sad sacks!!

:)
 

yyaldrin

in je ogen waait de wind
i'm actually trying to take a bit more pictures, especially of friends and nice moments. i've never really had a habit of doing it and i regret it as i have a very bad memory and have found out i have already forgotten so much nice moments and stories.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
what a bunch of gloomy whiners! photography is interesting and enjoyable, who cares if you don't look at the images very often. So what? It entirely possible to take phone photos AND ENJOY THE REAL WORLD AROUND YOU, THE TWO ARE NOT MUTUALLY FUCKING EXCLUSIVE! I love taking shots and love going back through my photo library or Instagram and recalling the times and places.

You're all too fucking intellectually serious and important to allow yourself to enjoy life, maybe THAT's what you should be examining in your lives instead of your fucking phones and hard drives! Makes me what to go over there and kick you all in the collective ass, grab you by the shoulders and give you a good shaking. Quit being such a bunch of fucking navel-gazing sad sacks!!

:)

This is fair but it's also avoiding the pathological aspect of phototaking

It's clearest in my view in galleries where people take pictures of paintings instead of looking at the painting.

They don't look at the painting, think "this is worth taking a picture of" and then take a picture of it. They take a picture of it and move on instantly.

I agree that photos are fun and all that rest of it but I think there IS something other than fun going on here.
 

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
This is fair but it's also avoiding the pathological aspect of phototaking

It's clearest in my view in galleries where people take pictures of paintings instead of looking at the painting.

They don't look at the painting, think "this is worth taking a picture of" and then take a picture of it. They take a picture of it and move on instantly.

I agree that photos are fun and all that rest of it but I think there IS something other than fun going on here.

Occurs to me now that this might just be making something that was already true of those people MANIFESTLY obvious.

If they weren't taking photos they'd be looking at these paintings for a second anyway...

And AGAIN I'm not saying I DON'T take picture of paintings, I DO - CRUCIFY ME IF YOU MUST
 

luka

Well-known member
We always find ourselves poised between the everything's great sunny side up American optimism of Leo and the mitteleuropa miserablism and doom of firefinga.
 

version

Well-known member
Several days later Murray asked me about a tourist attraction known as the most photographed barn in America. We drove 22 miles into the country around Farmington. There were meadows and apple orchards. White fences trailed through the rolling fields. Soon the sign started appearing. THE MOST PHOTOGRAPHED BARN IN AMERICA. We counted five signs before we reached the site. There were 40 cars and a tour bus in the makeshift lot. We walked along a cowpath to the slightly elevated spot set aside for viewing and photographing. All the people had cameras; some had tripods, telephoto lenses, filter kits. A man in a booth sold postcards and slides -- pictures of the barn taken from the elevated spot. We stood near a grove of trees and watched the photographers. Murray maintained a prolonged silence, occasionally scrawling some notes in a little book.

"No one sees the barn," he said finally.

A long silence followed.

"Once you've seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn."

He fell silent once more. People with cameras left the elevated site, replaced by others.

"We're not here to capture an image, we're here to maintain one. Every photograph reinforces the aura. Can you feel it, Jack? An accumulation of nameless energies."

There was an extended silence. The man in the booth sold postcards and slides.

"Being here is a kind of spiritual surrender. We see only what the others see. The thousands who were here in the past, those who will come in the future. We've agreed to be part of a collective perception. It literally colors our vision. A religious experience in a way, like all tourism."

Another silence ensued.

"They are taking pictures of taking pictures," he said.

He did not speak for a while. We listened to the incessant clicking of shutter release buttons, the rustling crank of levers that advanced the film.

"What was the barn like before it was photographed?" he said. "What did it look like, how was it different from the other barns, how was it similar to other barns?"
 

Leo

Well-known member
I just can't be bothered with the stress of concerning myself with taking photos.

LOL...how is it stressful? you see something interesting and you take a photo!

I have a mate who takes a photo of every pint he drinks with a caption like "might as well" and then when he gets drunk he starts lamenting the fact that he spends so much time posting photos on social media. It's just another unnecessary layer, imo. Just more clutter.

your friend is a moron and you shouldn't judge the world and topic of photography by him. you also should stop hanging around with him.

It's clearest in my view in galleries where people take pictures of paintings instead of looking at the painting. They don't look at the painting, think "this is worth taking a picture of" and then take a picture of it. They take a picture of it and move on instantly.

these people are also morons, why bother paying any attention to morons?

We always find ourselves poised between the everything's great sunny side up American optimism of Leo and the mitteleuropa miserablism and doom of firefinga.

ying and yang, the circle of life! plus, I'm right!

The real pox is selfies. Especially fuckheads taking selfies at funerals.

can't argue with that.
 

luka

Well-known member
Sites which get photographed and filmed a lot do have an aura it's true. They seem more real than their surroundings. I sit facing St Pauls and it's certainly true of that building. Almost like its levitating. (I know it's on a hill)
 
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