I think this is the key. People are not increasingly living their lives online. Li'l story. I've got this radio show. There's a DJ who used to be on the radio show who didn't like that the radio show existed after he left. He controlled the Facebook page. We asked for it nicely back and he blew it up. 1500 followers gone. So we rebuilt another Facebook page (because ugh) and my Extremely Online co-DJ invited 1100 of his closest friends - all in the "scene" - to like it. We got 36 follows. Theoretically I have like 1300 followers here. Realistically? I think I've got five. Maybe six. Someone referred to Threads as elder-care for brands the other day; it's for people who want their Twitter to be more Facebooky but with Instagram subtracted from it. Judd Legum & Crew are freshly outraged by right-wing media networks on Facebook without noticing that Facebook is so terrified by the long-term prospects of Facebook that they've blown $44b trying to make face computers happen. People scroll through Tik Tok but it's not like they're looking for (or getting) deep engagement. Instagram has become a scroll of clickbait; Twitter has been burned to the ground and Youtube is busily reinventing public access television. I don't think we've lost the ability to see reality, I think we've lost the ability to give a fuck about anything we see online. Low-quality clickbait like this propagates because it's (1) cheap to make (2) poorly remunerated (3) effectively unmoderated. That's a combo for sheer disinterest. Say what you will about 4chan, it had commitment. Nowadays the only people who really give a shit about "online" are people who have steadfastly refused to touch grass since 2016. Lazarus deepfaking their way into $25m? That's an opsec problem, not a deepfake problem. If you phone in the important shit, any important shit will be phoned right back out again. Banking has always been stupid and the banking sector has always been ripe for plunder. And the thing of it is it's all nerfed out because of dumb bullshit like this - there's an "undo" button on SWIFT and any bank where a junior employee can launch $25m without recourse deserves to lose $25m. I think there's a growing divide between the shit the Online think is important and the Grass Touchers think is important. And the Grass Touchers are right.People are moving through their lives — increasingly lived online
Not only does being so online skew what you see about your own world, but it actually creates alternative realities where what you see is only a small fraction of reality. If I wanted to, I could essentially watch nothing but Kdramas and anime, read news from Korea in English. I can do so in the same house as someone who watches nothing but sports. A MAGA person never has to see, hear or read anything that isn’t MAGA. The streaming services, explosion of content, and the ability to have private screens mean living in your own universe. I think this might be rather dangerous as shared, lived experiences and knowledge are what bind a society together. I don’t know how you can find common ground when we don’t share a set of facts or experiences.
Yeah, I think you're right about this. It's not that people don't know what's reality, it's that its internet stuff, who cares if its real it doesn't matter, the only point is to be a distraction for a little while.