The Diminishing of Exploration on the Internet

(I'm digging out posts that have been languishing in my drafts and finally finishing them up. This was a post written on March 21, 2020, and finished today.)

Some of you are perhaps aware of my recent feelings about the Blue Bird Site: that the environment it encourages is now more like a glasshouse with the flimsiness of cling wrap; the archival of information is non-existent (RIP to all of the useful threads I can never find again); and the changing social norms of Internet 2.0 that place unhealthy emotional value on the production of a "relatable" "self" "brand" "content" for an "audience". All of this nonsense is why I keep a blog now - I've, sadly, outgrown the type of internet that Twitter represents.

After watching Abigail Thorn's video essay on Artists and Fandoms, which btw compliments another video by Lindsay Ellis on Manufacturing Authenticity, I felt like playing with one particular idea that connects these disparate feelings I mentioned above together, especially in the context of myself as a creator. It's an idea that explains why I've moved away from Twitter threads to focus more on blog posts, and why I no longer wish to contribute frequently and reactively to The Discourse. It's also, like too many things, a consequence of late-stage capitalism orbiting around grand notions of hyperproductivity, hyperspecificity and hyperoptimisation.

It's the diminishing of exploration.

What a terrible phrase: the diminishing of exploration! I'm sorry for my poor presentation of words, lol. But this diminishment is exactly the phenomenon that has turned me off from social media that operates on a limited word count and a cascading if sometimes decontextualised presentation of information - whether it's someone's hot take, a useful thread of links or a live tweet of a friend's personal project.

I thought about calling it the loss of exploration, but that's not accurate, because exploration is still alive and kicking. Instead what I am trying to get at is the erosion of the sake of exploring information: of growth, of a sense of play with ideas, of changing one's mind and taking intellectual detours, of meandering guiltlessly with no specific goal or message or purpose. Kinda like what this blog post is.

You can't do this on Blue Bird Site (or the Book of Face). The way these public spaces are constructed by corporate forces doesn't encourage meandering.

(side note, from March 21 2020: someone is having a loud party downstairs - during the plague?! Really, Melbourne is still in dream land about the seriousness of the virus)

One of the really sad consequences of the diminishing of exploration is there is no interest in the possibility of nuance and imagination: everything you say has to necessarily be something you fundamentally believe in. Or has to be an expression of something you already are.

Now, I am NOT conflating this with being responsible and careful with your words. Responsibilty is different. What I mean is this sense that anything you say or do has to conform to a third party's perception of who you are as a person. In marketing speak, this is your "brand", a constructed idea or story that you present to an audience and that the audience believes is reality.

The thing is, humans can't be brands. To become a brand is to constantly see yourself outside of your body. You become a ghost that supervises and judges every action of your flesh, based on the edicts of... who, exactly? People call it corporation. Some call it society. Censorship. Cringe. Likeability. Algorithm. Regardless, all of these things are reactionary - they do not appreciate space or time for thought. Everything is fast. Snap. Go. Out of sight, out of mind. Everything is reaction. By taking over your attention, you have no room to think of alternative realities.

It's like being thrown into quicksand, every 90's kid's nightmare - with all that sand flooding over you, it's not wise to struggle too quickly. So you stand still, letting the content pour over you. You can't step out of that quicksand and go back out to the world with air or trees or sunshine. It's all sand.

Except the quicksand IS escapable. And unlike what fiction has told us, you actually can't be completely sunk into it. This quicksand is social media. Whatever that is being said and shown about how the internet or human interaction or commercial operate on social media are things that do not need to be held, to allow to be poured over. You can crawl out of it!!

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A friend and I were chatting about how a lot of people, specifically a certain type of artist, will readily slot in the quicksand as a placeholder for beliefs and ideas they have either not interrogated or developed on their own. The example that we circled around was the pivot to video. There is pressure for artists to show their face or speak or dance or play video gimmicks in order to retain their audience, even if it goes against a primary reason for why they become an artist: to have their work speak for them. The pressure is artificially imposed by social media companies, which are chasing the trend of Tiktok (and also, the higher value of video ads), and then artificially enhanced with a threat: do this or you will be snuffed out by the Algorithm we coded.

Our lamentation was not on the people who chose to pivot to video, but on whether or not folks have considered at all if video (and its consequences) makes sense with reality and/or their practice. This goes for any other quicksand truism: drawing fan art increases virality, virality is necessary for a career, follower count leads to material outcomes, etc.

All of these truisms individually on their own are neutral anecdotal statements. But as tactical strategies applied to enhance an artist's practice, not every statement is going to make sense to every artist's practice.

However in order to recognise if a strategy makes sense, the artist has to know who they are, what they want, and what brings them joy. They also need to know who their audience is, ideally and in actuality.

The caveat is that in order to obtain that level of introspection, the artist needs time to think. To read. To experience. To explore.

The thing about social media is, in addition to the conflation of projection (the "brand") with reality, it is also about the flattening of creative output. The faster and more a timeline flows, the more it looks like a blur. I don't know about you, but I find it very hard to slow down and explore if everything is rushing by me and I can't take a moment to pause my timeline and scroll backwards to catch up. Or worse, I can't catch up at all without spending too much time at the expense of actually creating and thinking.

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I've been attempting to recalibrate my usage of the internet, and my usage of social media, that prioritises deep reading and sustenance. The slow internet way of doing things.

It's not always successful, because I can't control how the people I follow on social media manage their accounts. At least blogs and articles are starting to resurface into my internet diet, as well as meaningful, ideas-heavy conversation with peers. I'm also having a blast uncovering forums, the pace of which suits me and I actually enjoy scrolling back to catch up on the conversation.

It feels good to meander again. To crawl through the interwebs. To lurk and not be perceived by eyes as a "brand" or a "projection". While I'm beginning to be at risk of detachment from the mainstream of things (that's a blog post for another time), for the first time in a long while... I feel like I am at home on the internet again.