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I wish I could be AFK
May. 8th, 2023 03:28 pmI've been thinking a lot about vomitdistrict's essay, and in turn, biddyfox's response to said essay. Linked here and here.
The TV gave a bad, but powerful reason to stay inside. An end to your grueling shift gave you an opportunity to experience ultimate, inertial comfort; A time where socialization happens to you, without the labor that comes from talking back. Why wouldn't you skip a few nights at the bar to watch your show? You're exhausted, so why not?
As people stopped attending their local cafe to watch the newest episode or Rawhide, the third place became less and less of a social force. What good are our games of darts if it's now just the two of us?
This left the formation of social groups much, much harder, as people that would normally engage in conversation are now trapped in a loop of exhaustion and exhaustive comfort. It thins groups and condemns even more friends to the same fate - A spreading of social atrophy through the act of crashing.
As the internet came along, the longing never went away. A longing of chatting with your friends festers within you, and entertainment then takes that longing and sates it with talk shows and podcasts. And why wouldn't you watch them? The bar shut down years ago, where else can you go?
We've established the talk show is meant to emulate a friend group, but there's so many facets of socialization that entertainment took with it. Sitting in the park benches with people you'll never talk to, but have given so much. Starting a conversation with a stranger when giving them an extra rice krispy treat that fell in the vending machine. The love and generosity that comes from being in a scene. God, the scene.
What can we even do about this? This slow extinction of the small things? I'm not fully sure. The shutting down of physical spaces is a wound that can't be dressed well, and the internet currently does it especially poorly.
Virtual landscapes, while they have very powerful examples such as VRChat, most of the time only reach towards surface-level recreations of physical reality; A world of tables with nothing on them, beer that you can't drink, and windows with views that never change.
I think this is a serious problem inherent to digital socialization. We try to put reality into the computer, when it should be the other way around. Illegally installed places where you can make information with others. A refashioned ice cream truck that blasts MOD tracker music and is full of detachable computers and sensors, where anyone can make a video game or a book out of cardboard and paper, while drinking a soda taken from the cooler in the back.
We 100% should use very small, cheap computers as a form of graffiti, too! Stealthily install birthday card sound chips in the unused drawer in the bank's bathroom to play stuff from your last noise show. Solar powered connectable servers full of PDFs, bolted behind road signs. NFC cards are literally a dollar each! If we could, we could literally install webpages on bathroom stalls.
Reclaiming socialization means that we need to, in part, reclaim the physical world, whether the landlords like it or not.
There are a few vague ideas that I also want to look into, but I'm not currently knowledgeable enough to tackle those. Sorry. I'll let you know when those are out of the oven.
The TV gave a bad, but powerful reason to stay inside. An end to your grueling shift gave you an opportunity to experience ultimate, inertial comfort; A time where socialization happens to you, without the labor that comes from talking back. Why wouldn't you skip a few nights at the bar to watch your show? You're exhausted, so why not?
As people stopped attending their local cafe to watch the newest episode or Rawhide, the third place became less and less of a social force. What good are our games of darts if it's now just the two of us?
This left the formation of social groups much, much harder, as people that would normally engage in conversation are now trapped in a loop of exhaustion and exhaustive comfort. It thins groups and condemns even more friends to the same fate - A spreading of social atrophy through the act of crashing.
As the internet came along, the longing never went away. A longing of chatting with your friends festers within you, and entertainment then takes that longing and sates it with talk shows and podcasts. And why wouldn't you watch them? The bar shut down years ago, where else can you go?
We've established the talk show is meant to emulate a friend group, but there's so many facets of socialization that entertainment took with it. Sitting in the park benches with people you'll never talk to, but have given so much. Starting a conversation with a stranger when giving them an extra rice krispy treat that fell in the vending machine. The love and generosity that comes from being in a scene. God, the scene.
What can we even do about this? This slow extinction of the small things? I'm not fully sure. The shutting down of physical spaces is a wound that can't be dressed well, and the internet currently does it especially poorly.
Virtual landscapes, while they have very powerful examples such as VRChat, most of the time only reach towards surface-level recreations of physical reality; A world of tables with nothing on them, beer that you can't drink, and windows with views that never change.
I think this is a serious problem inherent to digital socialization. We try to put reality into the computer, when it should be the other way around. Illegally installed places where you can make information with others. A refashioned ice cream truck that blasts MOD tracker music and is full of detachable computers and sensors, where anyone can make a video game or a book out of cardboard and paper, while drinking a soda taken from the cooler in the back.
We 100% should use very small, cheap computers as a form of graffiti, too! Stealthily install birthday card sound chips in the unused drawer in the bank's bathroom to play stuff from your last noise show. Solar powered connectable servers full of PDFs, bolted behind road signs. NFC cards are literally a dollar each! If we could, we could literally install webpages on bathroom stalls.
Reclaiming socialization means that we need to, in part, reclaim the physical world, whether the landlords like it or not.
There are a few vague ideas that I also want to look into, but I'm not currently knowledgeable enough to tackle those. Sorry. I'll let you know when those are out of the oven.
