The World We Were Warned About
Sometimes, I have this dream where I’m on a train. I don’t know which train it is; maybe the D.C. metro, or one of the newer lines in NYC. But it’s crowded. When I look around me, I never see bodies, just faces. They have human features, sure, but they’re lifeless and gray. The only color in the whole scene comes from the light, buzzing upwards from cell phones and tablets that float inches away from the faces’ eyeballs. The eyeballs are weird; not in their aesthetic, but because they’re the only movement. Everything else is still. They follow the scrolling screens. I can’t see the content, but I know it’s there. The eyeballs follow up and down, left to right. It’s like watching some apocalyptic mental carousel. I’ve had this dream maybe ten times in the last couple years. Enough times that I’ve convinced myself that maybe I’m getting a little paranoid.
Last week, though, I tracked my media consumption. The goal of the project was to better understand the time I spend consuming media, how I access it, where I access it, and how I engage with it. Prior to the project, I considered myself one of the last ones — guardians of verified facts, a standard of truth, belief in an ethical mission that is inherent not only to journalism, but any profession where the public is receiving information from a well-resourced or influential entity.
Maybe I over-estimated myself.
Because when I tracked myself, what I discovered was more akin to the humanoid robots in my dream. I found myself sharing, engaging with and posting material without paying too much attention to its veracity. I felt a crushing anxiety throughout my day to continue to consume, regardless of the quality. I watched in line at Starbucks as the people around me barely lifted their heads from their screens to order. Scroll, click, share, skim, share, click again. Like? Angry? Sad! Content- who cares! Is it on brand? Does it work with the sentiment that my network expresses?
You know that idea of espoused values and practiced values? How sometimes, there’s a fissure between the two? A company might say “we want to be good for the planet” but in reality, dump thousands of gallons of pesticide into some river in Peru. Exactly. My consumption, and the consumption of those around me wasn’t in the service of better informed decision making. No, it felt more like the perpetuation of some virtual persona I’ve built for myself. And lord knows, an Avatar needs opinions too.
At the end of the project, as I look at my results, I realize my paranoia isn’t uncalled for at all. Suddenly my jokes about Orwell or Bradbury or Vonnegut or Huxley aren’t funny anymore, because they cease to be jokes. Because somehow, whether it’s the media we’re consuming or the way in which we’re doing it, or some combination of the two, we’re forgetting that what we consume should be digested, should serve a purpose. And we’re just stuffing our faces into paralysis.
In the dream, I always look down at my hands first, and try to speak second. I’m terrified that a time will come when I can’t see my own hands, but only the device that’s glued to them.
