During the last Black Friday sale, I purchased a budget-friendly projector, and it has honestly been a game changer. Watching movies has become such a joy, with the massive screen size and stunning visuals that completely immerse me in the experience. There's something magical about the way big screens brings cinema to life, making every scene feel more vivid and engaging. I even keep my mobile away for the full duration of the movie, which in recent times has truly been a challenge for me. I read recently about how this person had their screenplay rejected by a major OTT player because it wasn´t sufficiently ´second screen content´ - it required the viewer´s full attention, in a manner that if they were using a second screen while watching the content, say their phone, they would miss key plot points.
Anyhow, it was only 8pm when I finished watching Visaranai (I want to write about it after I have watched Viduthalai 1 and 2 as well). I did not have the mindspace to watch another movie, and I was lounging around watching some YouTube videos. This time, it was a 20 minutes video about Kafka and Metamorphosis, a well-made deep dive into his works and themes. The video ended, and the algorithm took over presenting another video from the same channel on individuation. My recommended feed was soon flooded with videos reinforcing a Kafkaesque outlook: countering existential dread, isolation, and the absurdity of modern life. What was intriguing to me was that most of these videos were from one channel, and the channel had no clear creator, no discernible source, just content floating in the digital void. I paused to ask myself why the algorithm had nudged this channel for me. More importantly, who was the creator and what was the objective of the creator in putting these videos out? With no clear answers except deliberations on how YouTube´s recommendations work, it made me wonder if I had chosen this path of thought myself or if I had simply been nudged along it, as one is nudged along city streets by a tide of pedestrians to a political gathering without quite knowing why they are all going in the same direction.
My peer group bubble has recently been besotted with the ethics of how different digital services impact our behaviour, and how to tailor content consumption to suit our individual objectives - from setting well being timers for being online to turning off all notifications on weekends. WhatsApp is the main culprit - it has transformed the way we keep in touch. Before WhatsApp, staying in contact meant phone calls or meeting in person, or watching their curated updates on Facebook. Now, it is an endless series of live groups, abandoned groups, dormant groups that come to life once a year, each one pretending to be a space of connection, but often feeling more like a performance of it. The politics of who responds and who does not, who sends an image and who merely likes it, has become their own strange social currency. WhatsApp has created yet another digital ritual of togetherness, an illusion of keeping in touch without the depth of real conversation.
Instagram, in a different way, a relentless stream of curated images and aspirational captions makes you feel like everyone else is living in a beautifully lit, purpose-filled world. It is positivity turned into performance again. I put a picture of my walk, beautiful orange pink skies from where I live, but how do I convey the melancholy of winter or that the skies are accompanied by 40kmph wind that chills my nose as I post the picture? I find myself questioning whether this effortless communication is truly communication, or if I am manufacturing entertainment by posting content so that my friends can browse through my picture book (but both of us denied the experience of sharing the real stories).
Twitter drains you differently. It makes you have opinions you never needed to have, demands reactions to issues you barely knew existed. It sets up endless opportunities to argue, but in a way that exhausts rather than enlightens. It is possible to scroll for hours and feel like you've been intellectually engaged when, in reality, all you've done is burn through your mental energy on disputes that dissolve into the digital ether the moment a new controversy appears. There are important conversations, but how impactful are the consequences of these conversations? Do they truly bring about any change, or does Twitter too serve as another medium to be seen, and to be heard, both fundamental needs of people that goes unfulfilled the way society is structured today.
Books and movies seem to be a contrast. When you pick one up, you at least know that you've made a decision. You chose the author or the movie, the subject, the perspective you are willing to entertain in that frame of existence. There is a contract between reader and writer, between the movie maker and the audience. You go to watch a commercial potboiler, the movie maker gives you what you go looking for. Even with newspapers, there is an acknowledged framework of editorial choices and curation, a tangible sense of where the information is coming from. You pick up Times of India, knowing fully well the type of content you are likely to encounter, as opposed to say an Indian Express. Online, the curation is silent and invisible. The things you see appear not because you chose them, but because a system (that is opaque to you because you do not actively engage with it) selected them for you, based on choices you make but calculations you cannot see. You consume them as impulses, as reflexes. I wonder if this is a difference that matters, or if it simply exposes an illusion that we are never really in control of our intellectual environment.
In many ways, a privileged problem to have. Billions of people around the world still lack access to the internet, to the wealth of information and opportunities that come with it. For them, connectivity is not a matter of curating content but of accessing it at all. And yet, perhaps for this reason, it is all the more important for those of us who do have constant access, to consider what we are consuming and why - is it content we have curated for ourselves, or is it content that has been curated for us? We have this vast, unparalleled ability to learn, to engage with different perspectives, to enrich our thinking - but are we able to truly use it to curate the experience we want? For example, I have the ability to stay in a bubble and read books of one viewpoint, or pick up books of differing viewpoints and expand my worldview. But when I log onto social media, I am invariably presented with content that confirms with my worldviews, and I will need to take conscious (and sometimes extreme) actions to step out of the algorithmic bubble. It is not as easy or transparent to get YouTube to start recommending Coldplay songs today instead of the Ilaiyaraja I have been listening to for the past several years, as it is to walk into a new aisle at the music store. Abilities to curate aside, do we even need to be putting effort into consuming content wisely and only wise content?
A friend of mine (hey Ramsub) often mentions this book A Town Like Alice by Nevile Shute, which revolves around Jean Paget, a young woman who helps to build a town in the Australian outback. Once they have built the basic infrastructure like hospitals and schools, the community sets out to build sources of entertainment like cinemas and places for communal activities, and such shared entertainment becomes a vital part of rebuilding life and fostering peace in the community. Some form of entertainment has always been a key part of culture throughout history. In the past, events like bullfights captivated public attention, offering drama and spectacle. Today, we turn to shorter, snappier content like reels and TikToks, keeping us hooked with their quick, digestible entertainment. The shift in medium aside, the fundamental need for shared experiences and moments of excitement remains unchanged. Entertainment and distraction play a pivotal role in keeping society peaceful by providing an outlet for stress and frustration, offering a channel for redirecting energies away from conflict. It is a way to keep people’s minds occupied and content, ensuring that when tensions rise, there’s always something to soothe the collective spirit. There´s a theme to be explored here, of what entertainment and content engages and builds communities, and what types of entertainment is ´brainrot,´ and the place both have in society it. Terming content ´brainrot´ is in a manner elitist, and speaks of a privilege to be able to see beyond content that consumes you, and consume entertainment consciously and engage meaningfully with it.
I feel myself increasingly pursuing offline connections and pursuits. Being off WhatsApp groups, choosing to limitedly engage in Instagram, deactivating Twitter at regular intervals, in favour of participating in offline clubs and conversations - there is one offline club here that I have been to recently, it simply gathers people at a location, and everyone is off their devices. Reading, painting, origami, hula hoops, chatting, anything but engaged on their devices.
I love technology, I sell (and buy into) its benefits and yet I feel there is value in considering the ethics of the manner in which content is made available, and the dynamics of how we as recipients consume entertainment. Opting out entirely is like walking away from the current of a river that will flow with or without you. Maybe the real question is not whether this shift is good or bad, but how we navigate it with awareness, with intention, and with an understanding that our choices for ourselves and others define our days and eventually our lives. We can consciously consume content, or allow the content to consume us. In many ways, it is a story as old as time. The questions to continue to think about are -
Why am I consuming this content? (Entertainment is a very valid response)
Is this content real? Does it matter to me whether it is real or not?
Who is making this content, and what are their allegiances?
Why are they making and disseminating this content?
What sensibilities of mine does this content appeal to, and who stands to benefit from it?
Have you noticed any changes in your patterns of consuming online content? What do you think of when you catch yourself seeing too many reels? I´d love to hear about it.
I'm drawn to read Pico iyer's book now
Also coincidence, there was a feature on the FT talking about this topic and how few recently released books have approached the same.
How technology is reshaping human experience - https://on.ft.com/4aN60oL via @FT