Yeah, Yeah: And The Boomers Said Lead'll Kill Ya
Alarmism anyone???
“Well, yeah, phones probably aren’t incredible for kids, but I mean, people said the Internet would destroy society, and you probably don’t know this but Socrates said—” were what amounted to Frederick’s not-so-poetic last words, as the based redpilled 4chan killbots separated spine from brain: so cucked, the soy.
May He forgive my blasphemies.
All my life, I’ve heard this defense; yet all my life, the vibes have ne’er been icker. I’ve not once been quite comfortable with it: this steadfast assertion that we’ve seen all there is to see; that the outcomes have been writ, and by our simple survival, they must be A+; that simply because the world presently resembles that which we’ve rapidly grown accustomed to, this surely must be the natural state of things, and we have in fact not decayed in any way.
Counterpoint: everything has fucking consequences! We do not get to radically reshape the manner by which our days are structured; our attention is focused; our relationships are weaved; without exchanging something we have long taken for granted. Seinfeld no longer maps to our reality. People do not live lives grounded by connection to one another through shared resentment of material friction; we instead project avatars, digital mockeries, vibes and memes and RCS reactions; we read subtitles instead of books.
That last bit — we read subtitles instead of books — my God, the clichéd, no? How many have shared this lament over the past decades, unaware of the teenaged mediocrity of their “work”? Well, I don’t know, what if it’s fucking true anyways? What if the lamentable demands lamentation, regardless of how tired and unoriginal the observation?
It seems to me that it is no simple matter to claim that we have not, in fact, become progressively more alienated with each new development of media and technology. We have clearly suffered a change! The ability to titillate our e’er-so-titillatable human systems, with less and less end and fewer and fewer limitations, is clearly going to have, and has already had, great effect on our society and our fundamental psychology.
“People thought TV would ruin the world, but it didn’t, so—” WHAT? Are you for realifying me at this time? What part of observing our beloved world could possibly lead one to conclude that any of the great experiments of the past century have had acceptable results? Sure, the vast number of simultaneous changes makes it difficult to ascribe any consequence to any cause, but come ON, man: come on. Come on. C’mon!
The main character of the new season of Jury Duty is no Ronald. I do not trust this man.