I’m angry. What started out as a normal meal-making expedition at home quickly became a lunch infused with frustration towards mass media’s subtle subterfuge. This whole day, a cool 11 days after rent was supposed to be sent in, I’ve been worrying about how to make money, quickly. I seek, I search, and once I feel I’ve seen enough, I take out my phone and seep directly into Instagram. Upon the application’s immediate visual pop, I throw my phone down, and the generational Bunsen burner warmth wells up from the bottom of my ribcage. I’m ANGRY! Why am I so angry? It’s a diffuse anger, one that has been brewing and simmers softly behind my ears pervading daily activities. I’m angry with myself, but I realize instantaneously (instinctually?) that this anger has roots elsewhere, in a more ethereal plot. This anger is not new; it’s been growing beneath ‘us’ for some time… Us being the still young-, still job-seeking- or job-searched-, still growing rapidly into ourselves-, still figuring out how taxes work-, still missing VHS-tape rewinders-, still understanding of what life was before the technological boom-MILLENNIALS (dare I use that cursed word). This anger stems from many gardens, many threads have spun our loop, but one imperative factor that has fueled this anger is that we’ve grown from a bed of soil that was fertilized by a completely different generation, one that could only hold as much wisdom as was presented a la mode. They couldn’t predict the future with any reasonable certainty; how could they have known the way in which mass and social media consumed via Internet would impact our psychology and social health? That was the beginning of a tangent… So why am I truly upset? Because our western culture is rife with pure distractions and delusions of grandeur, and escaping it is virtually impossible. Is it an addiction? I don’t want to be distracted, yet the moment I seek rest, I’m sent almost without control, like a Monopoly “Chance” card, directly to a property owned by the social media giants. There they tell me, without words, what I should be concerned about; my reaction to (mostly) utterly useless information is directed by marketing snakes and a curated picture book form-fitted to what I should concerned about. It’s inescapable. There is a truly productive way to use these platforms, for communication and to illuminate inspiring information dolled by loved-ones and friends, but for the most part this method of use is disguised into a babadook of controlling thoughts and anxiety of ‘not living ones life to the fullest’. Shouldn’t I be the one to determine that? Why am I bombarded by ‘bikini bodies,’ overly photo-shopped vacation destinations, and news articles lacking valid sources? All are distractions from objective self-evaluation. One of my points buried beneath all this usual garble is that I seek rest, renewal, and reflection but instead I’m met with ways in which I can feel worse about my current situation, ways in which I can further fuel the fantastical delusions and dented dreams of my anxious thoughts trains carefully crafted by capitalist agenda makers. As Nietzsche would support, and understanding that I sound a bit conspiratorial, it literally pays corporate industries for Us to be ill, distracted, poor, duped. I think generally, when we feel overwhelmed, alone, without security, we tend towards a craving of consumption. While this can manifest in many forms we often want to spend money as a result, and this drives us toward making foggy purchases and we fall subject to the paradox of choice (via Barry Schwartz). We become divorced from our true needs while were in the thick of consumer-choice overload, and end up choosing items that temporarily console us (toys). Parallel to this consumption, when we feel like we want to turn our conscious minds on standby, we often access the greater pool of social media tides. We scroll through the vast picture books of surface achievements that can never convey the actual experiential value of the moment captured. So in this tide we slowly detach from our own understanding of value; while not completely lost or disintegrated, it becomes deformed, conformed to society’s depiction of value and what ought to be valued. Is all of this making sense? I know most of us have felt some type of way re: the impact social media has on our ability to self-evaluate and how much time we spend on tangential thoughts borne from these virtual seeds. In a way, I believe it probably all comes down to self-discipline, how much distraction you’ll allot yourself before you get sick of not producing on your own. Again, there are many threads to this web; how many ‘til we spin our own?

[Image: Islands – Pawel Kuczynski]