“The deep problem of acceleration is transcendental. It
describes an absolute horizon—and one that is closing in. Thinking takes time,
and accelerationism suggests we’re running out of time to think that through,
if we haven’t already” (Nick Land, A Quick-and-Dirty Introduction to
Accelerationism)
Robert Nozick, an American philosopher in his 1974 book
Anarchy, State, and Utopia mentioned about a thought experiment which he called
The Experience Machine. The thought experiment poses the question that if
humans were to plug into a machine that can produce any type of desirable
pleasure, though through fake impetus, will humans plug into it? Nozick
believed that most of us won’t because humans prioritise other things such as
the value of doing things and forming genuine connections with other people
more than the mere experience of pleasure. Social media today functions as a
real-world incarnation of Nozick’s experience machine where the pleasures
derived from a simulated source are prioritised over actual reality.
People doom scroll over reels to have a pleasurable time but
the thing to consider is how much pleasure is too much? Another thing to
consider alongside pleasure is the normalisation of lies on such platforms. For
instance, when we are watching a stand-up comedy show, we don't concern
ourselves with the factual truth when the comedian is narrating a funny story,
rather we are concerned with its content which could be a lie. In the same way,
people enjoy watching wholesome, funny or prank reels which could be just a
performance created with the intention of making attention-grabbing content in
anticipation of virality. Similar thing with brain-rot trends where people can
have a laugh over such memes, however, the algorithm has the tendency of
sensationalising and overdoing such trends that eventually even our mind blurs
the line between simulation-driven information and reality, the simulation
takes over our personal world which is marked by Hyperstition (fictions that
make themselves real). In that sense, we are not only being fed, we are being
overfed to the point that we find comfort in such augmented existence, creating
an illusion of need.
Though social media can sensitise people over issues, and
give instant news about the happenings of the world, the issue with this aspect
is not just the distribution of misinformation but the distribution of partial
information that can hamper holistic narratives. Moreover, social media opens
the path for new ways of doing things, extending the horizon of what’s
possible. The trend of Italian brain-rot memes and AI generated Ghibli art
could be considered a type of innovation through digital medium paving way for
a new aesthetic language, though it may sound controversial but what it simply
reflects is a post-modern, post-human creativity emphasising on pastiche which
I would like to compare it to Warhol’s 1961-62 art Campbell’s Soup Cans.
Critics would object over digital AI creativity cause of its absence of
intentionality and tendency to merely replicate pre-existing ideas and existing
references, but music sampling, postmodern art and even photography to some
extent have been doing the same. However, it is in fact alarming to the point
that the death of the author as expressed by Roland Barthes in 1967 stands very
much true today.
Concerning this present era, there is high plausibility to
be swayed by digital mimesis. Mimesis refers to how a person voluntarily or
involuntarily imitates his environment or mimes it. I would classify mimesis
into two types - the mimesis of character and the mimesis of image. For
instance, attributing someone to be a gentleman could denote two aspects - one
might only mime the exterior image of a gentleman and emphasis only on
presenting himself as one to others, thus creating the perception that he is a
gentleman despite of having an ungentle character, and on the other hand, a
person lives and practices his life just like a gentleman would, emphasising
more on character over image. Now both could be the case for a person but the
mimesis of the image seems to be a rapidly growing trend that could be observed
in the current world especially through social media, where the youths can
internalise and embody personas from internet whispers, reels, memes and
tweets, and then present themselves as authentic but what they might
essentially be doing is status-signalling. Deeper issue of social media content
creation, especially in Instagram is that it poses the danger of the
commodification of the self with its emphasis on branding over genuineness
which also influence the minds of the viewer/observer, leading to the
prioritisation of the spectacle over the real.
There is an urgent need for a reformation of the mind
especially among the youths where simulated reality overpowers the actual
reality as we can observe that there is an apparent crisis of critical thinking
and questioning. I’ve come across numerous self-assuring Bible verse reels on
Instagram that misrepresent the actual scriptures. Despite this, I’ve seen
people reposting them without fact-checking. Because of the deficiency in
attention span shaped by the phones, it has somehow disallowed people from
critically deconstructing the information they consume. The current world
demands hyper-vigilance from individuals so to not be passively swayed by the
sensitive triggers of the experience machine.
