Do we really want out?

[version]

I don't think that's what I was doing. I included myself in my comments when I said most of us have only ever seen things like wars through a screen.

 

[you]

I don't think that's what I was doing. I included myself in my comments when I said most of us have only ever seen things like wars through a screen.

Fair enough, I interpreted 'it's not as real' in a certain way.

 

[version]

I get your point though. The duvet comment does come off as a bit smug.

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah I don't subscribe to the boomeresque/reactionary line of thinking that living online isn't living in reality. If anything, I err in the other direction.

 

[version]

I get your point though. The duvet comment does come off as a bit smug.

inb4 Tea pops up and says "Uh, I think you mean snug!".

 

[Clinamenic]

Good thing you blocked that one. It would have undone his recent progress.

 

[you]

Yeah I don't subscribe to the boomeresque/reactionary line of thinking that living online isn't living in reality. If anything, I err in the other direction.

This will be a phenomenological can of worms. (Because worms are, it seems, bad folks). But yes, I'm there are arguments along the line of not recognising as real events unless documented online/shared etc. This feels like Sherry Turkle territory.

There is a very obvious riff here that sharing on social media is Freud's fort-da mastery of the traumatic event.

 

[version]

Yeah I don't subscribe to the boomeresque/reactionary line of thinking that living online isn't living in reality. If anything, I err in the other direction.

I saw something earlier about the big battle being between Real and Virtual rather than Left and Right.

 

[Clinamenic]

I saw something earlier about the big battle being between Real and Virtual rather than Left and Right.

Yeah I see this as a gaping demographic divide, psychologically, which may play out in the form of internet natives coming into political prominence, over the course of the coming decades.

 

[you]

Please post a link @version

@Clinamenic "internet natives coming into political prominence, over the course of the coming decades" - isn't this a given? No one lives forever.

 

[Clinamenic]

Please post a link @version

@Clinamenic "internet natives coming into political prominence, over the course of the coming decades" - isn't this a given? No one lives forever.

Yeah, but whats less of a guarantee, I suppose, is that this generation actually enacts a sort of internet-native paradigm shift, in terms of how society is run. I.E. I don't know if they'll just abide by the same pattern of pre-internet policy and worldview.

 

[Clinamenic]

But yeah unless that adrenochrome works out, the boomers will meet their entropic fate.

 

[version]

Please post a link @version

It was just a tweet saying that. There wasn't much more to it.

 

[version]

On the topic of what is and isn't real or truthful, I think there are degrees to it. I can have an authentic response to the war in Ukraine, but I'd be hesitant to claim my engagement through the media is as real as someone in Ukraine's direct experience.

 

[Clinamenic]

Yeah I think as far as experiencing world events go, there is something watered down and pasteurized about experiencing them through any kind of media, as if the mediation itself sifts away some of the raw qualia of the would-be direct experience, and may add certain intellectual context.

 

[version]

The missing physical component must play a part. The western mind's increasingly stimulated to a far greater degree than the body. Everything's coming in as abstracts and concepts. There's little tangible experience of something like a war, just the idea of it being beamed in from elsewhere.

 

[Clinamenic]

The missing physical component must play a part. The western mind's increasingly stimulated to a far greater degree than the body. Everything's coming in as abstracts and concepts. There's little tangible experience of something like a war, just the idea of it being beamed in from elsewhere.

It really is a trend of conscious experience being abstracted beyond physical constraints. It sounds super mystical but how else would one describe it?

 

[Leo]

Yeah I don't subscribe to the boomeresque/reactionary line of thinking that living online isn't living in reality. If anything, I err in the other direction.

I don't have an issue with IRL vs. online when it comes to events. you might not be affected in the exact same way when you're sitting alone behind a keyboard thousands of miles away, but you can certainly connect with the event on most levels.

where the internet falters is in relationships. you can text and video chat with people or sidle up to them in the metaverse all you want, but there is a dimension or effect of physicality -- for better or worse -- that exists in real life interactions that you'll never replicate online. the two realms have gotten closer to being equivalents, but they are not equivalents. that missing element may become irrelevant to people who live online, but it's a loss nonetheless.

and I'm not saying one form of interaction is intrinsically better than the other, although I have my personal preference.

 

[version]

I don't have an issue with IRL vs. online when it comes to events. you might not be affected in the exact same way when you're sitting alone behind a keyboard thousands of miles away, but you can certainly connect with the event on most levels.

There's clearly a marked difference between having your apartment block shelled and watching the shelling on your laptop though.

 

[you]

The missing physical component must play a part. The western mind's increasingly stimulated to a far greater degree than the body. Everything's coming in as abstracts and concepts.

I'm going to ignore the issue of the broad claim regarding the 'western brain'.

Of course reading media reports is more than just vicarious to events. They are reports. You re-gard the event. You're not part of it.

---

But are they 'abstract and concepts'? I think media has moved away from concrete tone (Economist for instance) and more moved to a very emotional narrative heavy 'human angle'.

But this in itself is, I'd argue, a further step away from events and more to do with mediated 'empathy'.

For example, a 20 minute read about a certain person's crisis, although it feels empathic, might not be. In dire situations many simply do not have time to feel, to think, to ruminate on the emotions of it all - at all. This is, I argue, one of the ironies of 'human angle' media narratives - that what one takes as empathy is actually a synthetic narrative, diegetic, a mirage.