Jonny Numb

The Game is tiring, and perhaps it was always a Young Person’s Game to begin with.

“We don’t care, it’s not our fault – that we were born too late,” and all that.

There was something alluring about the humble beginnings of places like Facebook and Twitter – they were niche services (the former for college students; the latter for people trying to hone their stand-up careers) that had yet to become constipated with spam accounts, porn bots, and people trying to swindle or murder you in Ye Olde Marketplace.

There was a purity to interaction that wasn’t constantly being interrupted by the siren song of commerce and shit being smacked on your platter because your browsing history got you hooked into some mysterious algorithm. Forget even the purity of the interaction – there was just interaction, period.

At some point, interaction became one of two things: standoffs predicated on contrarianism (“flame wars” in the parlance of Internet B.C.) or circle-jerks by folks wanting to be initiated into a faction of Cool People. I guess there’s something to be said for the dopamine rush that accompanies wanting to really impress someone or pissing them off for shallow reasons, but seeing this routine play out (mainly on Facebook and Twitter) is simply exhausting.

Thinking back to LiveJournal, and how I spent an inordinate amount of time on that site (my personal and movie-review accounts still exist over there) during my college years, its purpose was rather novel: an online space you could use to share your thoughts in whatever way you saw fit. Some folks took it seriously; others didn’t. I followed a handful of accounts that represented a bit of both worlds.

The interesting thing was, you could make your “LJ” as solitary a place as you wanted. You could create a “Friends Only” account; you could disable comments. You truly could keep the space exclusive to your eyes only if you wanted (I, of course, needed validation, so I almost always kept comments open).

The elements of forced “community” in places like Facebook and Twitter have lead to environments that mirror standard high-school cliques: folks with inflated senses of worth glad-handing you in the name of increased follower counts or Patreon dollars. It’s kind of exhausting being surrounded by people who feel the need to hawk product to drive engagement, and even more exhausting to witness the superficial, bullying squabbles people get into to go viral.

Also exhausting: the battle for the most high-profile accounts to make the most ignorant and misinformed statements each day, in hopes of keeping themselves relevant (because, sadly, “any publicity is good publicity”). In these backward times, popularity drives credibility – thus, anyone with a large enough follower count can pronounce anything as being “factual.” Anyone who dares question a statement – unless they, too, are popular – tends to get steamrolled by a bilious chorus of faceless agreement.

Again: I have no patience for The Game.

I suppose my point is: we’ve become well-trained little denizens of places run by heartless SOBs. Where “come-at-me-bro” fighting in the comments has become the equivalent of Cybersex for some. Anyone with half a brain would view that as a waste of energy, which begs the question: can most of us – myself included – even boast of having “half a brain” at this stage in The Game?

Part of my aim with this space is to keep it as one-sided to my interests as possible. Releasing oneself from beneath the umbrella of places like Facebook and Twitter (at least as primary hubs of social interaction/projection) is taking one step toward doing things for yourself, instead of doing them to impress others for made-up numbers that turn into ladders to nowhere.

(Fear not, dear reader: once I get out of this rut of hating on my symbiotic, toxic relationship with social media, I will eventually move on to writing about things more worthwhile. This is a bit of binge and purge, if you will.)

(Images from Michael Haneke’s Funny Games (2007)