The Experience of Passive Consumption

The experience of passive consumption (cable TV, tiktok, etc, pointed out in another comment here) is essentially the experience of psychological oblivion. When you get sucked into reels, you go from "here" to "there," and in the process, while you are "there," your entire whole self is destroyed. The same psychological phenomena happens to gambling addicts, alcoholics, or users of heroin. It has fewer physiological downsides and side-effects as those things; the only material loss you have is the loss of time. But far more remarkable than that it's simply a waste of time, and rarely articulated, is this psychological loss. The destruction of the self. That echoes through a person's life, to their relationships, their self-construction, etc. It is those echoes that we now deal with on a mass sociological scale. By the way. "There" has a lot of upsides too. People can be creative, productive, expressive while they are "there" too. Creating, being funny, being social, etc. That's why this is so hard.

A screenshot of a long English text post describing passive consumption such as cable TV and TikTok as a state of psychological oblivion. It compares getting absorbed in reels with addiction, arguing that the main cost is lost time and gradual destruction of the self, while acknowledging that online immersion can also enable creativity and social expression. The joke is the exaggeratedly philosophical framing of ordinary scrolling as a profound sociological crisis, making it a reaction to excessive screen time and doomscrolling. EN: A screenshot of a long English text post describing passive consumption such as cable TV and TikTok as a state of psychological oblivion. It compares getting absorbed in reels with addiction, arguing that the main cost is lost time and gradual destruction of the self, while acknowledging that online immersion can also enable creativity and social expression. The joke is the exaggeratedly philosophical framing of ordinary scrolling as a profound sociological crisis, making it a reaction to excessive screen time and doomscrolling.

• @gentoomemes / 15019 2024-12-01