The Cocoon

luka

Well-known member
For a very long time I was completely terrified of strangers and particularly formalised interactions, like ordering from a cafe. Sometimes, in particular circumstances, it comes back. I still can't do parties or anything resembling a party under any circumstances. There are certain types of people and certain social groupings that obliterate me. If I can't hang on to my self definition and self understanding and my own modes of interaction I drown.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
It's a grim future. And a very likely one - where a handful of giga-corporations control millions of people via their smartphones and Alexa. The brave new world of Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Samsung. People not only want this, they can't wait. Give people "Convenience", and they'll trade ANYTHING for it.
 
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luka

Well-known member
I like people but I'm very much an introvert. I'm the introverts introvert. The gold standard. I've just learned some tricks to survive.
 

luka

Well-known member
It's a grim future. And a very likely one - wehere a handful of giga-corporations control millions of people via their smartphones and Alexa. The brave new world of Alexa, Apple, Facebook and Samsung. People not only want this, they can't wait. Give people "Convenience", and they'll trade ANYTHING for it.

It's convenience but also trading a relatively open ended, unpredictable interaction (with its inbuilt possibilities of misunderstandings and humiliation) with a standardised impersonal one. A reduction of risk.
 

Leo

Well-known member
interesting luka, why do you think you're introverted IRL but so vocal, eloquent and engaging here?
 

luka

Well-known member
I was saying earlier in the thread I don't think online interaction is necessarily a degraded form of communication. I think it allows for things which face to face interaction makes difficult. I've always been vocal and outgoing once I'm certain of my space and I feel comfortable but I'm not one of those people who are immediately at ease in any room they walk into. Because I worked in hospitality for so many years I learned different tricks for taking some of the intensity out of communication, different ways of distancing myself. You stage a performance, make it a kind of game.
 

luka

Well-known member
Meeting people from online is easy cos they already know who you are, what you do, how you communicate. So there's no period of having to establish that. You can carry on the conversation you were already in the middle of anYway.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
I was saying earlier in the thread I don't think online interaction is necessarily a degraded form of communication.

Any form of conversation has it's written (and unwirtten) laws. It appears though that online conversation (with it's micor-mutations over the years) has become the norm, and with face-to-face conversation/communication you have (had) all those nuances like gestures, looks etc which translate not very well into online "discourse".
 

Leo

Well-known member
Meeting people from online is easy cos they already know who you are, what you do, how you communicate. So there's no period of having to establish that. You can carry on the conversation you were already in the middle of anYway.

this is also true for real life social interactions, once others get to know you. I guess we get to that point faster online, for whatever reason.

the missing element is body language, the way a person says something. as we've also seen here many times, the written word can come across very differently from how it was meant, either/both in content and tone.
 

luka

Well-known member
I meant first time meetings. The initial contact. There's no doubt there's problems with communication online. I'm not arguing that it's an upgrade, just that there are certain advantages, or at least points of difference which do not necessarily involve a loss. I'm committed to real life. I do my thing in real life. I talk to strangers every day. You just don't want another modern life is rubbish thread cos it gets a bit one note. This conversation is potentially more interesting than that.
 

luka

Well-known member
I've mentioned this before but I think one interesting fork in the road is what happens when the shops disappear. We're crossed a threshold. People will still consume needless to say but consumer spending is no longer the main driver of the world economy. The internet is forcing 'bricks and mortar' shops out of business.

There's an opportunity, potentially, for a reclamation of public space. Shopping is a tragically degraded use of it in any case. Could there be a way to repurpose it for something which involved interaction and shared projects etc. Almost certainly not... but who knows
 

poetix

we murder to dissect
There was that US cunt who came to Whitechapel to goggle at the locals, interpreted a sign prohibiting public boozing as evidence that they'd managed to impose Sharia law. Hilarious really. Whitechapel's an absurdly civilised part of London these days.
 

Leo

Well-known member
when retailers have difficulty selling products, they pivot and sell experiences. instead of a current boring brick and mortar store selling widgets and gadgets, you'll get immersive environments where you experience the products in some sort of an enticing, advanced or luxurious setting, connectivity of technologies on display to demonstrate their fullest capacity. you don't just see racks of trainers, you experience what it's like to compete one-on-one versus a Michael Jordan hologram on a simulated basketball court at the five-story Niketown.

similarly, locals transform into listening bars.
 

luka

Well-known member
Sure and escape rooms are the most visible manifestation of that. But still. We'll see.
 

blissblogger

Well-known member
this cocooned shut-in thing already happened in Japan didn't, decades ago, they had a word for it, i can't remember - it was a whole phenomenon, young men completely cut off, spending all day playing video games

Baudrillard talked about the home of the future as being like a satellite - connected to the world by streams of telemetry - TV, etc etc

Actually Borges, prescient fucker that he was, imagined something like this in his 1949 fable "The Aleph" - on the connected man of the future, "I picture him in his study, as though in the watchtower of a great city, surrounded by telephones, telegraphs, phonographs, the latest in radio-telephone and motion-picture and magic-lantern equipment, and glossaries and calendars and timetables and bulletins.”

i think the positive way of looking way at some of this would be say that it's a new form of postgeographical socialising - intensified in some areas (intellection, potential for acrimony), diminished in others (face to face, haptic, getting drunk, base-level civility restraints where you're in someone's presence )

perhaps we should all drink while posting on Dissensus

(maybe some of us are)

actually writing something at the moment about the changing notion of the neighbourhood, how your neighbours are determined by taste, sensibility, interests, politics etc, and they're not living next door, they're living... well, somewhere like this

that's why i started addressing my blog readers as "parishioners"
 
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luka

Well-known member
I don't think barty is saying the urge to shut yourself away is new more that society is facilitating it as never before and consequently it's become the norm, or path of least resistance.
 

sadmanbarty

Well-known member
actually writing something at the moment about the changing notion of the neighbourhood, how your neighbours are determined by taste, sensibility, interests, politics etc, and they're not living next door, they're living... well, somewhere like this

the tories have a 'northern strategy' at the moment (that they also attempted in 2017) in which they use the post-brexit, culture war-ification of british politics to gain seats in labours ostensibly socially conservative northern heartlands. elections no longer based on regionalism, but rather social values.
 

luka

Well-known member
the tories have a 'northern strategy' at the moment (that they also attempted in 2017) in which they use the post-brexit, culture war-ification of british politics to gain seats in labours ostensibly socially conservative northern heartlands. elections no longer based on regionalism, but rather social values.

This is Bartys great fear; the Great British Culture Wars.
 
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