The Same Voice, Everywhere

Robbie Netzorg
Jul 24, 2017 · 2 min read

A common theme of writers, at least from what I’ve heard I don’t really know that many, is that they are all told to “find their voice.” It’s a lucky thing that it seems like everyone in journalism, blogging, and non-fiction books have found the same fucking one.

With respect to news articles, this goes without saying. Journalists are bred from a young age to forgo individuality for the comfort of the inane. It’s hard to tell for us mere humans where a story comes from based off of the text alone. Look at a story from AP or from CNN or from Fox News. The stance might vary, but the lexical foundation is all the same.

Now, what I really want to discuss, since journalists are nothing more than the masters of the art, is how the same voice has not only infected our nation’s reporters, but our fellow bloggers and internet users as well. Whenever we look to read something online, or go to the comment section, or engage in whatever 21st Century digital inaction we decide upon, we look at the sea of messages and imagine them to be all the same person — the same faceless person. Trolls or those completely unlike ourselves might perhaps break this mold, but, for the most part, our individual voices all coalesce into a collective voice.

You see, the true problem here is that we have begun to view the internet as a single entity that exists outside of the control of human beings. The content comes from organizations, fellow users themselves become a faceless User, a Leviathan that is at once all and one. The internet is not experienced in groups, save for the rare moments when you’re so inclined to share a funny video with a friend in person, but is experienced alone. It is fundamentally a solitary technology whereby the individual enters in faceless partnership with the collective summarized in tailored-made content.

I’m rambling again, forgive me. My thoughts have become more erratic these days the more and more I see our fellow human beings waste away in front of these infernal devices. Oh but I love them. How could I not? We were after all raised with these machines, they have become part of our brains. How could we think without Google? How could we program without Stack Overflow? When we do not know how or what to think, we look towards the internet for the answer. The internet becomes not a society of individuals, but instead a wall of content that magically manifested itself for the individual viewer.

There are a few that might be the exception to this experience: those who actually create the content we see online. But, considering on most websites this is a minuscule fraction of the total userbase, you can’t help but wonder if they are empowered with content creation or are cursed to be the pigs that produce entertainment and knowledge for us.

Here’s a bold line in case the text was getting too much for you.

— Julia Mets, Senior Opinionator of The Sunday Sophist

The Sunday Sophist

Weekly yearnings for meaning

Robbie Netzorg

Written by

The Sunday Sophist

Weekly yearnings for meaning

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