- Living in the reign of attention devouring virtual platforms
You and I and everybody around are defined, in one way or the other, by the possessions we own. The homes we live in, the cars we drive, the watches we wrap around our wrists, the clothes that hide our imperfections, the wallets we flaunt and the phones that connect us with the world and its inhabitants. Our possessions pigeonhole us, whether we like it or not, in categories and classes. The elite, the middle classes and the great unwashed owe their existence to abundance or absence of possessions. There is, however, something that everybody has in equal amount but in limited supply ie attention span.
Let us start counting all the sights and sounds that vie to grab our attention. There are whatsapp messages, facebook notifications, twitter updates, snapchat statuses, Instagram posts, ubiquitous billboards, and unsolicited advertisements that beg for our attention, squander it once they have it and make us crave for more. We, dearest sirs and ma’ams, are not the alpha predators we believe ourselves to be. We are, in all honesty, the clueless prey in the claws of attention devouring creatures.
All these machinations have gained complete control over us. We hear, see, and enjoy the boisterous bits on our black screens and then laugh out loudly, press like and share it with the world. Once we are done, the wait for the next hilarity continues and since there is no dearth of such stuff we keep on consuming it while craving for more. Be it gaffes, fails, lewd comedy clips, ravings of some random, frustrated guy crack us open. All it takes to have our attention is to have something that instantaneously gratifies us.
The omnipresent black mirrors — our TVs, our phones, our computer screens — have made us believe that every calamity that befalls on someone else is an opportunity to giggle at as it didn’t choose us to be its victim. Our glee, it seems, lies in all catastrophes that spare us. Our black mirrors, dear folks, have become our pacifiers. Sans them life seems nothing but an endless aeon of boredom. The monotony of existence and the angst due to this can be best endured, so we believe, when we are either laughing our lungs out, shopping our wits out or dining our appetites out.
Our glee, it seems, lies in all catastrophes that spare us. Our black mirrors, dear folks, have become our pacifiers. Sans them life seems nothing but an endless aeon of boredom
Ironically, our journey towards progress has led us to a place where even the basic facts about everything under the sun are disputed, stats are unreliable and twisted and truth is exiled to a land from where no soul returns? Since we humans are in habit of naming things we call our time the ‘Post-Truth’ age. Meaning thereby that the truth is dead, gone and buried. Let the one who can yell the loudest and have the charisma to turn people into blind followers be the leader of men.
The truth about our nature is: No matter how much we love to think of ourselves as rational, logical beings our motivations and preferences are always rooted in primal emotions of fear, hatred, and love. We rationalise our choices, we sublimate our urges, we channelise our animal instincts, and we repress our utmost desires and passions. We perennially crave for an outlet. The caveman found it on walls, the kings and feudal lords found it in waging wars and patronising the artists and poets, the industrialists found it in his mad pursuit of power, prestige and money. Now, the countless online podiums bestow upon us an outlet to vent out our frustrations and have catharsis.
Also, the human quest for control and utter supremacy over ‘other’ is no longer undertaken by medal-laden old generals trained in the craft of warfare. The mighty armies have been relegated to the fringes where they plan, execute and command their armies against motley gangs of insurgents, rebels and belligerents in godforsaken tracts of land. A man armed with a laptop, an Internet connection and a sinister mindset can wreak more havoc than a militant armed to the teeth.
On an aside, the rise of social media has added nothing new, at least substantially, to the way of the world. Primarily, it was a tool to facilitate communication and connect the world. And like every tool it had the potential of becoming a weapon. Of late, dearest sirs and ma’ams, our black mirrors haunt us with deluge of choice, entice us with novelty, ridicule better angels of our nature, threaten us with impending doom, skew facts to please our likeness, perpetuate beloved myths, and darken our souls one click, one frame, one meme at a time.
The triumph of black mirrors is complete, dearest sirs and ma’ams. And there are no challengers in sight. May we all find peace in our servitude.