Is Technology Turning us into Social Inbreds?

Currently, we are all part of The G.O.D. culture. That’s because we Get On Demand almost everything that we want or need, usually online, at the press of a button. This sometimes even includes our friends or even lovers.

And, if we don’t get something online, we go online first to figure it all out before we even step into a store.

Once in the store, we locate the product we came for, purchase it through a self-checker, and get out faster than we can complete the sentence “Hi.”

As a result, efficiency and automation is sometimes more reliable than humans. It’s at least faster and helps us stick to a schedule that is also governed by efficiency and automation.

in Fact, we rarely require social interaction in order to function at a base level. We can get food, toilet paper, a sense of intimacy (ASMR), and even sex all at the touch of a button. Amazon would probably even leave a puppy at your door. I know they will deliver a Monstera Deliciosa.

That said, humans are still undeniably social creatures. As long as we still call ourselves human, that will not change.

Cave Women Do It Together

I can only imagine that 12,000 years ago, work and socializing were nearly synonymous. I am also reasonably sure that Hunters and Gatherers came together mostly to get things done. Not just to eat rotten fruit, worship, dance, graffiti the walls, and have barbecue. Perhaps, even, work and play were indistinguishable to them as they both felt the same; neither more meaningful than the other and all of it together.

Now that socializing has been eliminated as a necessary function in many areas of our lives, we choose our friends differently. For instance, I think we tend more towards people with similar intelligences, beliefs, and levels of wealth to us. However, for the cave woman, she probably had little choice in friends. It came down to proxemics. And if there was a bad seed in the bunch, it was probably handled by the group. That all said, you must realize that I am totally speculating on all this.

Also, Social media is exceptional at maintaining digital relationships. It mentally tethers us to specific friends and colleagues who share our belief system. It’s quite hard to break away. How many of you know what your ex-lovers or bosses are up to 10 years after a breakup without even being stalkerly?

However, in the same way modern tech keeps us tethered to certain people, it also helps to keeps the others out. Others who might have helped us in some functional capacity in the past, we don’t need anymore. Automation has taken care of that. And, if they show up on our social media and act weird, gross, or seem angry, or ignorant, we just block, unfollow, restrict…

Hmmm, I Wonder If This Has Had Any Effect On Inequality Or People Feeling Disenfrachised

Here’s a little secret about me, I like to read the comments under YouTube videos because it’s kind of like being a participant observer in an alien world.

In short, automation and social media can act as a social filter protecting us from the contamination of new perspectives, exposure to other people’s struggles, as well as other representations of happiness. Remember when we thought it would bring us all together?

When Atlas Shivers

Now, we engage mostly with people who are familiar and comfortable. Safe people. People who remind us of ourselves.

We avoid the time-suck and annoyance of having to figure out somebody new. And, then there’s always that risk that somebody new will shake our world view.

A shaken world view can be a serious problem for people who have built their empire on the foundations of their world view. It can cause them to have cognitive dissonance and/or lose a sense of purpose in their lives. In short, it can be extremely devastating.

However, that is another blog post. Perhaps, titled: The Rise of Nouveau Niche and the dangers of Nuance to their empire…

I don’t know.

If you come up with a better title, please leave a comment.

Consequential Strangers

Unfortunately, with our new and improved efficiency and automation, we also end up missing out on a lot of chance encounters with consequential strangers.

Oh, you don’t know what a consequential stranger is. Well, let me tell you. It is a person whom you barely know, however, you are entangled with them in some way. These are regulars in your life, but they are not part of your inner circle. Or, it’s possible that they only show up once in your life; however, their Wind Song stays on your mind forever and they become a sort of imaginary stranger (as opposed to friend). Or, instead of relying on my definition of it, you can read the book on it here: https://amzn.to/3vy8Dpq

The important part is that they have a profound effect on your life without being directly involved in it. Often, it’s a person supporting your lifestyle: This could be a hairdresser, a cabdriver, or, the panhandler who helps you push your car into the parking lot of a McDonalds when your transmission goes out, or the kind and interesting tow truck driver who becomes your knight in shiny armor.

The Barista

This consequential stranger, you might talk to everyday of your life. Say, for instance, when you buy your coffee just before work, there’s a certain barista who always remembers your name, your breakfast preferences, and notices when you trim your split ends.

In other words, She sees you. And that makes you feel interesting and capable of being interesting. So… you begin to bring ideas to your boss that you realize might interest her because it interests you, and the fact that the barista seems to be interested in you means that you might be an interesting person with interesting ideas — get it?

You hadn’t even thought to share ideas with your boss until the barista made you feel valid. In fact, you were just going to keep them hidden on your phone forever.

This, of course, changes your life. It leads to a promotion. Or, maybe your boss shrugs it off, which hurts a bit, but doesn’t kill you. And because it doesn’t kill you, you get into the habit of sharing your ideas. Because, why not? Your ideas are just loitering on your phone.

Eventually, an idea sticks and you get ahead. Or, maybe none of them stick and you begin to realize you are in the wrong work place. Either way, your life changes because of one consequential stranger.

The Handsome Bartender

Or, it could be the bartender you just met to whom you confessed that you hate art, even though you just spent 4 years in art school. And then you realize, you have never told anybody this before, not even yourself.

So why did you tell him? Probably because he’s not sincerely invested in your life. However, he does seem genuinely interested in it in a non-judgemental sort of way. Also, he has truth serum, and he’s filling your glass with it.

Anyway, he acts as a mirror to you as you spill all your guts to him. He does not criticizes, but only listens…. And you know he’s listening because he repeats everything you say back to you. And, the best part is, he’s not going to lose his shit when he finds out that you quit your coveted job at Disney to be a full time accounting student.

Of course, you might also get that bartender who listens to you with a discerning ear and then tells you that you are fucking up your life and then calls an Uber for you.

Or, there’s the other kind of bartender who just takes you home after his shift, and you wake up the next day with both a bangover and a hangover.

Well, choose your own adventure. My point is that consequential strangers play magic 8 ball with your life, disturb your inertia, and make you say “whoa!”

Otherwise, you continue to live a predictable life, and think predictable thoughts until you get so comfortable at it that when something unpredictable happens, you go into full berzerk mode instead of just realizing that you’ve just been given a gift, a brand new shiny set of cognitive nodes to add to your already immense collection.

If you want to know more about consequential strangers, check out this NPR excerpt from 2009 “The Importance of Consequential Strangers.”

Caught In The Inter-Webs

If there’s something you want to know, you do a quick Google Search. Quick means you choose one of the first 6 options that pops up. It also means that you hand over your decision making to an individual or organization with the most money to dedicated to internet bandwidth and search engine optimization. And if that isn’t enough, they have algorithms that understand your online behavior, in terms of what you might click on next, better than you.

This means that while you are quickly on the internet, you are probably being fully puppeted.

Not only that, the more that they can limit your interactions with consequential strangers and just strangeness in general, the more control they have over your life. Why? because they can provide the comfort and predictability that you crave. The more you have it, the more you want it… It’s what makes you feel safe. And the longer you spend feeling safe, the more you become addicted to it, and the more you fear change.

You are literally on an Information Highway… The Information highway is no longer metaphorical. Think about it. You can only go in one direction and you can only get off at exits that were created by someone else. And even though, there are infinite points of potential interests in-between each exit, these points cease to exist in your mind because someone hasn’t put up enough money to make them visible and therefore not really accessible to you.

The only cure is for you to get off the highway and onto the side streets, either virtually, or physically. Only, thanks to the current USA administration for dismantling net neutrality, those virtual side streets and sidewalks of the internet are disappearing in the US.

Seriously, the safest cure is to actually go outside and talk to someone. If no one will talk to you, go to Walmart. They have greeters there, free of charge.

The next best thing is to subscribe to Silverilocks.com. I promise to always go outside of the box to bring you something different. Also, Silverilocks is hosted by one of the Good Guys in terms of large organization. WordPress is open source, created by the people, for the people, and these creators control the means of production.

Don’t Just Listen To The Word Of T.O.D.

The internet has given us our Tribe On Demand, our (T.O.D.) Tod listens to us, gives us lots of encouragement, and generally agrees with everything that we say. We feel good around our T.O.D. It’s a comfortable feeling, like being at home. Also, because T.O.D. is so much like us only pluralized, T.O.D.’s voice, amplifies our voice and gives us more power than we’ve ever imagined.

In fact, T.O.D. gives us so much that we don’t have as much tolerance with people outside of our tribe as we used to. We become inpatient with those people, fidgety, perhaps even angry, after all, every minute spent with those people is a minute away from T.O.D.

T.O.D. worship aside, if we are always hanging out with the same peeps either in real life or online and we are always reading what they are reading, watching what they are watching. Our intellectual diet begins to look pretty restricted.

Especially if we are missing out on chance encounters with anyone. Which means, we are missing out on a lot of ideas or facts that we never even knew existed.

Less Efficiency Is Sometimes More

Which is why getting out of your echo chamber and risking chance encounters with others can be so productive and rewarding. It’s worth it, even if it threatens your loyal relationship with you daily planner app.

Here are some things that will happen:

You Might Get Stimulated

Just getting out of our usual environment, period, stimulates creativity and thought, which means you will spend less time sitting in your office chair staring at a blank screen.

You Might Run/Process Faster, With Fewer Errors, And With Greater Functionality

When you introduce new data to your memory, you add more options to your problem solving apparatus, which exists somewhere in your brain. I think. Basically, this is like receiving an update to our operating system.

People Might Want To Work With You More

That’s because experiencing all kinds of human beings with different kinds of stories helps you become more empathetic. And, this will improve your social skills, make you more relatable, and you won’t have to spend as much time building trust or proving yourself. You will be more likable. Maybe, you will even get your some love.

You Might Get Your Motor Rollin’

It will definitely kick you out of your safest gear, which for some people is “Park”.

Seriously, sometimes it takes a new kind of fuel to get you motivated.

Or, hey, try my husband’s idea. Take an homeless person out for a cup of coffee for an hour and really listen to him. Because, guaranteed, you will both walk away from each other with more than you could have even imagined before.