Well said. You mentioned boredom early on. I think this is an important word in this discussion. Take my niece. She’s 18, iGen or young Gen Z or whatever the fuck. She was three when the first smart phone came out. She’s lived her whole conscious life ‘on’ social media. She has two serious suicide attempts under her belt. She’s constantly talking about how bored she is, with school, vacations, people, etc. It makes me think of DFW’s last book, The Pale King, which I haven’t read but know is all about the concept of boredom. It seems like young people today need constant stimulation. They’ve been neurally grooved by the internet/social media. Nothing’s fun anymore. Everything is a competition. Everything’s immediate. At the same time we’re slowly transitioning into more and more AI. I can’t imagine this gets us to a positive societal place. I’m probably oversimplifying and overgeneralizing, but it just seems like kids today are on the precipice of some kind of psychological cliff.
Lots of great points regarding the correspondence between the absence of stimulus and creativity, laziness as a route to loss of freedom, and how just getting a cabin in the woods won't save us. I like the paradigm of the unstable equilibrium--a pretty good descriptor for life in general. The power of adaptation of the species is in full view in this piece. Nice work!
I use facebook to share kid and pet photos to geographically dispersed friends and family and because my sailing club and theater club both use its groups feature to organize events. However, I’ve never understood the allure of most social media (twitter, instagram, YouTube, TikTok).
Good stuff. I think I’m with you.
Lots of food for thought!
Well said. You mentioned boredom early on. I think this is an important word in this discussion. Take my niece. She’s 18, iGen or young Gen Z or whatever the fuck. She was three when the first smart phone came out. She’s lived her whole conscious life ‘on’ social media. She has two serious suicide attempts under her belt. She’s constantly talking about how bored she is, with school, vacations, people, etc. It makes me think of DFW’s last book, The Pale King, which I haven’t read but know is all about the concept of boredom. It seems like young people today need constant stimulation. They’ve been neurally grooved by the internet/social media. Nothing’s fun anymore. Everything is a competition. Everything’s immediate. At the same time we’re slowly transitioning into more and more AI. I can’t imagine this gets us to a positive societal place. I’m probably oversimplifying and overgeneralizing, but it just seems like kids today are on the precipice of some kind of psychological cliff.
Michael Mohr
‘Sincere American Writing’
https://michaelmohr.substack.com/
Lots of great points regarding the correspondence between the absence of stimulus and creativity, laziness as a route to loss of freedom, and how just getting a cabin in the woods won't save us. I like the paradigm of the unstable equilibrium--a pretty good descriptor for life in general. The power of adaptation of the species is in full view in this piece. Nice work!
I use facebook to share kid and pet photos to geographically dispersed friends and family and because my sailing club and theater club both use its groups feature to organize events. However, I’ve never understood the allure of most social media (twitter, instagram, YouTube, TikTok).