2024-09-04 ・・・ outdoor cats and information overload

lately, i've come to really appreciate being outside. nothing really in particular about nature itself either. the weather doesn't play too much of a factor, and neither does anything inherent in the scenery. i just enjoy being removed from the digital realm now more than ever. every time i pick up the phone, i feel a swell of brain fog. everything ever and more, right in my fingertips. it's fucking exhausting.

evolutionarily, this follows a fairly obvious rationale: we are adapted to handle a much lower amount of data. for millenia, information traveled only as fast as people (or pigeons) did.

another one of humankind's reliable buddies. credit: imperial war musuem

we could not instantly access all of the world's problems and struggles and shiftings. our social connections did not often extend past physical immediacy. family, friends, people we work with, people in our community. maybe we sent a letter to a distant relative or a loved one far away, or read an article in the paper about war or local crime. but in this case, distance still presented itself as a barrier to information overload.

nowadays information is broadcasted directly to these metal bricks in our hand with delivery time in the milliseconds. we can see updates on every armed conflict in the world within five minutes on the news. we can read suicide notes on twitter. we can look up the body-cam footage of people shooting up churches and schools and theaters. we can witness people die in real-time every single moment of our waking lives.

not only this, but we can access dopamine at unprecedented rates as well. we can get thousands of dollars for rage-baiting on content creation platforms. we can play games psychologically designed to fry the brain's reward system. we can scroll a social media algorithm tailored to hook your dopamine receptors up to a digital iv drip of ironic jokes.

this is kind of genius if interpreted as commentary... credit: pinkydoll

we did not evolve to have access to this much information, much less cope with comprehending all of it. seeing all of this information fundamentally conflicts with how our brains work.

the above isn't anything all that novel, but more concerning to me is how all of this connectivity seems to have caused a cultural dissociativity. the convenience of instant access has morphed into some sadistic expectation to always be connected. we have to be informed, we have to be aware, we have to know what's going on, we have to give our opinion, we have to be in on this joke, etc. etc. etc. whether or not it's a capitalist push for consumption overdrive does not matter. it's all too much. weird shit is going down, the likes of which we've never seen before.

it occurs to me that dissociation could almost be a matter of natural selection... or maybe just survival instinct, like how people shut down in response to trauma. maybe it seems dramatic to say, but i firmly believe it is not. information overload is just traumatic. we have come to rely on smartphones, and not without good cause, yet we simply cannot handle all of this information they shuttle into our heads at once. we were never built for this, we did not adapt for this.

and so, to survive this, many people simply dissociate through it just to survive and do what they have to. they shut their emotions out, which then grow feeble and unresponsive. and life becomes empty. at least for me it did.

i consider myself as being emotionally dead, or at least dormant, from the ages of about 11 or 12 until i was about 21 or 22. not that there weren't some other very important factors at play, but coincidentally this was around about when i first became more aware of social media and the internet.

i didn't have any social media accounts really until 17, but even then it still wormed its way into my psychology. one distinct memory; when i was younger i played soccer at a nationwide level. at around 13 or 14, i stumbled upon a forum left open on my dad's ipad... it seem innocuous at first, it was a blog for ~elite~ youth soccer. there were match reports, and state tournament brackets, and league standings... and then discussions about players. i read comments posted by grown adults trashtalking children anonymously. i saw curse words and slurs. then i saw the league i played in. my team name. i saw jersey numbers.

somewhere in my teenage years is when the numbness spiraled. i truly loved soccer, but i don't think i managed to enjoy a single game until i moved for college and gained some mental breathing space. it still hasn't fully came back, either. i managed to claw myself out of the hole it made, but i will never find that joy as purely as i had it. and that doesn't begin to mention the impression this left in me about the internet, and the people who inhabit it, and how information about me and everything else is hidden somewhere in it.

another old memory. some time in high school i stumbled across a 'fan account' for me run by some students in my high school. in hindsight, it was fairly tame compared to how cruel it could have been, but i don't really find that of any comfort or a valid excuse. they would take creepshots of me walking to class or eating lunch, caption it with some lie or joke about me, and then post it. and people would like it and comment and talk.

just like that, another stressor. i can see myself as the butt of a joke at any second. an account dedicated to, in essence, ridiculing me is plastered online permanently. i can find it whenever i want, see what people said about me, and how many of them liked it.

i think it follows pretty clearly how, in order to get through high school with some aspects of my life still intact, i had to shut down emotionally. it was either that or anxiously spiral. that came later, of course, as i found space to undo all of the mental damage.

the internet, for all of its blessings, has also bestowed upon us a curse. there is too much shit going on, and suddenly it feels like it's expected that we know all of it, participate in all of it, engage in all of it, no matter how harmful and damaging it is to us.

rich, i know. talking about information overload while i ramble on and on in *shudder* blog post format. never thought i would be so self-absorbed to have a blog...

but in the end, i am only speaking to my own experiences, in my own sphere, with no hopes of being impressionable or viral or persuading or false or algorithm-friendly. i do not ask that people engage with this, only that if they do, it makes them think about their device usage, and then log off to touch some grass. in fact, i started writing this as a reminder to myself on this topic. we are not meant to see all or hear all. no matter how much capitalism sludge money relies on hooking us up to the information machine, we cannot handle that psychologically.

as i have disconnected more and more gradually from social media, internet forums, and even just the news and television and streaming services, i find myself and my sense of self growing clearer and more lucid. the internet—-used in careful moderation—-still informs a lot of my pursuits. i am still learning how to use the internet in the way that fits me best. however, i have come to realize that i am not one for this period of digital expansion.

engaging with things hands-on in my own way gives me joy and peace. i don't need to research the fastest way to pick up a skill, nor the best way to my destination, nor the exact translation of a passage i am reading. i have my hands and my feet, my senses and my mind. i do not need a world of infinite information.