The Portable Lobotomy

Take a moment to think about your phone

Now think about it honestly 

The advent of a perpetually accessible internet, and especially an internet that can fit in the palm of our hand, or the pocket of our trousers has been quite frankly, the single greatest destructive force to ever hit our society.

A little melodramatic perhaps, but bear with me for a moment. Even as a self diagnosed Luddite I am not so naive as to say ‘just throw your phone out’, or to believe even for a moment that mobile phones will ever go away. The genie has been let out of the bottle, and nothing short of the apocalypse will ever get it back in there. 

I do, however, want to tell you a story.

For millions of years the world was enormous, even a trip to a neighbouring town was a large undertaking. Then the wheel shrunk it, the age of sail sunk it again and the age of aviation shrunk it even further still. Now with the age of information, you don’t even need to leave your bed to have the entire world in the palm of your hand and quite frankly?

Human beings were not made for this

Since information started to grow legs and travel, tragedy trickled in. Now we are bombarded with it every waking moment. Millions are starving in Africa, Europe is at war and Asia seems to be collapsing in on itself in slow motion. How much tragedy can the human mind take before it burns itself out to avoid self destruction? The answer, I fear, is less than we’d hoped. 

While the internet may be adjacent to real life and not quite indicative of it, it is nonetheless a good indication of societal attitudes and trends, and quite frankly? It is bleak. 

Empathy seems to be a dying trait, the world seems more divided, and more harshly than ever, people seem to be angrier and more miserable than they used to be. Think of how many friendships or relationships you’ve known to have been cut off due to nothing more than a difference of opinion recently. You might have even done it yourself. When did this happen? When did we become so terrified of difference that we cut off the people in our lives due to a difference in perception? 

It may seem cliche, but Social Media once again rears its ugly head as the main culprit.

As some of you may know, Social Media thrives off of, and ultimately relies on engagement. For those who don’t know, engagement is any sort of interaction with a post, ad, video.. Whatever. Every like, every comment, every share, every retweet, that’s all engagement. As with most things ruining the world this is ultimately driven by profit. Every single piece of engagement is another set of eyes seeing an ad, another set of hands typing data to sell to third parties, another person making a profile of themselves that can easily be categorised, and then sold to. 

How is this relevant? Engagement is money, and what gets people to engage?

Anger

Think about how many posts you scroll through every day. How many you like, how many you save.. but how many do you comment on? Statistically, the posts you’re most likely to engage with the most are those that anger you. Just check the comments under any post that mentions the current assault on Palestine. Dozens upon hundreds of strangers arguing endlessly on the internet over a conflict thousands of miles away that ultimately has nothing to do with them. Of course, as with anything there are the exceptions, people who live in and around the areas that are fighting the fight, but the overwhelming amount of people? Not even on the same continent. 

‘Divide and conquer’ might be old and tired by now, but it’s no less effective. There is no greater method to stoke the flames of hatred than to divide people into ‘Us and Them’ and to remind ‘Us’ just how vile ‘They’ are. 

This is not to say that you should simply bury your head in the sand of course, only a fool watches nothing but his own backyard, but perhaps perspective is needed. 

Ultimately, what is it that you achieve by arguing for hours on the internet, or even for a few minutes? In these shouting matches no minds are changed, no perspectives shifted. Insults are thrown like rocks into the ‘other’ camp, and then returned in kind. 

Social Media is expertly positioned to take advantage of this, to tap into a person’s inherent empathy and drain them like an emotional vampire. While Keyboard Warriors fight their valiant battles against the wicked forces of ‘the other’, corporate rats, as they always do, sit back and enjoy the show from their ivory towers.

Take a step back, get some perspective and ultimately, get real. 

You are not experiencing anything. You are being force fed a carefully curated slop to maximise the profits of the corporate ghouls that control the internet, and the world at large. Defy the Antichrist, defy your masters, break free from the mould and shatter its walls. 

Jump off the express train to burning out your dopamine receptors while you still can, engage with your community in the real world, read a book, form meaningful relationships with the people around you, watch a classic film and most importantly, cut out the cancer of Social Media before it consumes you like a true cancer, if only for a day. 

Don’t let the Corpos buy you, too. 

“The Soul always knows what to do to heal itself. The challenge is to silence the mind” - Caroline Myss