How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star

by The Atlantic

newsletters.theatlantic.com

added by Keely Adler · updated 2y ago

“That feeling of helplessness comes out of the fact that all our agency is being channeled through these media,” he said. “We have these events that are ponderously large, like climate change or gun control, and to view them only through the lens of what happened or the abstraction of what people are saying strips away the notion of our agency and ... See more
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
“I think it also has to do with the proportion of one’s daily experience to dispatches from the past,” Sacasas said. Pre-internet, “the totality of my day wasn't enclosed by this experience of media artifacts coming to me.”
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
some are enclosed in this online world and develop a disordered relationship to time.
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
Do you ever get the feeling that we’re all just…stuck?
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
This depressing observation struck me as one outcome of living on an internet that is stuck in the past. It might seem the other way around: that our fleeting attention is the result of an internet that’s unrelentingly feeding us the now. But my hunch is that people feel stuck or move on because online, these events feel like things that have happe... See more
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
Constantly absorbing and commenting on things that have just happened sounds to me like a recipe for feeling powerless. Online, I frequently feel both stuck in the past but presented with a grim projection of the future. There is very little focus on the present, which is a place where we derive agency. We can act now.
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
In other words: A group of people direct their attention to something, and that changes its value. This, in turn, draws the eye of various media and attention merchants, which in turn changes the value again. Crypto hype is the purest and most logical endpoint of this phenomenon. What most people are talking about with a given crypto asset is just ... See more
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
And so we fight against that futility, in part, by weighing in. And posting certainly feels like having agency.
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 2y ago
ubiquitous connectivity and our media environments naturally lend themselves toward an influencer-and-fandom dynamic. If the system is built to inspire more and more layers of commentary, then that system will privilege and reward people who feed it.
from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic
Keely Adler added 3mo ago

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic

from How The Internet Is Like A Dying Star by The Atlantic