bedrot, brainrot, mush, slop and stew.
The ability to coin it is just the tipping point; what is with these things that make our lives “easier?”
Is there something to be said about the valor and experience of having to do something, go somewhere or be someone?
When I talked to New York’s lo-fi dram pop duo Phantom Handshakes, they talked about being inspired by the “in-betweens,” the liminal spaces of work and play, walking on the street or on the train.
What do we gain by having it all at our fingertips?
Wilson from Raleigh’s Thirsty Curses mentions Christine Rosen’s “The Extinction of Experience: Being Human in a Disembodied World,” elaborating on the advantages of “the trivial” — when you stop for gas, chatting with someone near you; meeting thy neighbor.
Proponents of the digital sphere talk about finding niche communities and meeting people you never would’ve before, and I wonder how good of a thing that is.
By nature of living in the same area, you’re likely to share more in common with your neighbor than someone through the phone.
I also want to posit about our associations of pleasure; it worries me that increasingly, our brains are accustomed and acquainted to eliciting pleasure from the silicon, plastic, glass, heavy metals and the like that go into these handheld dopamine machines.
When there are so many people in this world to love, to get attached to, to feel ties to and advocate for, I worry about machine-learning in our brains, making it so that the way we feel good is through touching plastic plugged in to some ether.
Beyond this, I wonder what that feel-good is.
Is dopamine the most sustainable neurotransmitter? I dont think so. Mostly built on action potential, it’s probably the reason we all feel so fried, so constantly tube-fed and sedated, which averages “content.”
Furthermore, what are the distinctions between art, entertainment, content and media? Where do we fit within that ecosystem? Where do we want to?
I encourage the harder route, the longer path, the possibly more scenic one, enjoying the effort of critical thinking in the hope it might dig us out of our incompetency hole.
