How We Lose Ourselves in a Stream of Digital Refuse
The deeper meaning of content feeds in the creator economy
Are you content with being lost as a ripple in a stream?
Whether it’s consuming art on Instagram, news on Facebook, articles on Medium, aphorisms on Twitter, songs on Spotify, or videos on YouTube, the medium is clearly the message, as Marshall McLuhan would have observed.
What this means is that we shouldn’t lose sight of the wood for the trees. We should keep in mind how the structure of our social systems impacts our daily experience. Indeed, the background overwhelms the foreground when the contents flow so quickly and when they’re evidently disposable, so that all that’s left is the stream or the feed as a whole, whatever that might be.
Digital Streams in the Creator Economy
Viewing a physical painting at a gallery or a museum, for example, is very different from glancing at a digital one on Instagram. When the painting hangs on the wall and the gallery isn’t too crowded, you can sit or stand and take your time, admiring the craft and contemplating the work’s deeper meanings. There may be only a few paintings on the wall, so they don’t crowd each other out, and they hang there for the length of an exhibition or a season.
