Media Distancing

(Part IV)

I was a small, unsuspecting teenager when I realized I was being lied to. By the teachers who told me "I had to be informed" and by the media that was supposed to inform me. I did not yet know what was wrong. I only knew that something was wrong. It took a few years of watching before I understood that knowing who committed which crimes where on the planet did not enrich my life. I noticed that my life remained completely untouched by massacres in distant countries and foreign cultures. Even announced world wars and apocalypses did not happen; they existed only in the crowded, anxious brains of bipeds. From that insight it was a short step to the only logical consequence. I banished newspapers, radio, TV, and above all the news from my life. And behold: my life gained a wonderful quality. I occupied myself only with things that lay directly around me and that I could influence directly if I wished. There were surprisingly few such things, and that added a large measure of peace to my life.

Later the internet came into my life. It was allegedly a window on the world. Unlike the old media, the internet created the illusion of interactive influence for its users. The illusion of control. It seemed I could zoom with mouse and Enter key into the farthest regions of the world. For a while that was genuinely fun. Then computer algorithms began analyzing user behavior and, based on a profile, made a selection of what might interest me. From that selection a program one day concluded what should interest me. That was the start of a regulation I already found distasteful in real life. Someone always had to interfere in my life with some intention, even well-meaning intentions, to influence it. What I could not have guessed or foreseen was how much the internet would change the way bipeds look at life and even their thinking and communication.

While almost all philosophies and religions warned against the great, omnipresent illusion, the internet made the illusion into the new, sole truth. Discussions and word battles on antisocial smear networks were the first warning signs that something was wrong with this highly praised toy. On one hand, bipeds seemed to lose every form of dignity and respect because they felt protected by digital anonymity. On the other hand, the digital medium itself seemed to carry an alienation from humanity; as if the digital filter were responsible for misunderstandings and confusion. As if the reduction of communication to two senses produced an abstraction that hid important information.

Again it was algorithms that made relaxation impossible. Some clever programmer, perhaps a clever program, invented comment functions and rating systems. Suddenly the dynamics on the internet changed. Avatars behind which alleged bipeds hid turned into crazy clowns in a huge circus ring, entirely obsessed with drawing attention to themselves and being liked.

By now the internet is a few years older and it is no longer a window on the world. It is a vast, open gate to madness, and whoever switches on the computer can no longer be sure of merely observing the madness from the outside. It often has the character of a lousy horror movie in which an unguarded moment opens a portal through which hell is carried into the living room.