Stop Looking At Each Other

People were losing excitement about the internet, starting to articulate a set of new truisms. Facebook had become tedious, trivial, exhausting. Instagram seemed better, but would soon reveal its underlying function as a three-ring circus of happiness and popularity and success. Twitter, for all its discursive promise, was where everyone tweeted co

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There are no bodies online, but there are myriad presences. With everyone pressing their virtual flesh on everyone else all the time, the communicative life becomes more extensive, and more oppressive, than it is in even the most densely populated of cities. Simmel’s description of the “psychological conditions” of the metropolis—“the rapid telesco

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After the forest expands, we will become deeply sceptical of one another’s realness . Every time you find a new favourite blog or Twitter account or Tiktok personality online, you’ll have to ask: Is this really a whole human with a rich and complex life like mine? Is there a being on the other end of this web interface I can form a relationship wit... See more

By portraying our opponents as beyond persuasion, social media sorts us into ever more hostile tribes, then rewards us, with likes and shares, for the most hyperbolic denunciations of the other side, fuelling a vicious cycle that makes sane debate impossible. We mustn’t let Silicon Valley off the hook, but we should be honest: much of the time... See more

Do you think that our lives being more visible on social media has aggravated the problem of competition in friendship? It must do, because the anonymizing makes it less real. A physical encounter with somebody can smash through projections, because you realize that a person is actually generous, or thoughtful. Or you discover they have their own f

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