Michael Davidson – Turn It Up Brains work in mysterious ways: I literally hadn’t thought about this song since 1988 (it’s on the soundtrack of the Madonna movie “Who’s that girl?”), and then it suddenly popped up. It’s, as the kids would say, a bona fide 80s banger.
Listened to β Podcasts
None.
Watched β Films and Documentarie
Once were brothers, a documentaire about Robbie Robertson and The Band (which is the best band name ever, by the way);
I have Netflix now, so I watched the following documentaries:
Long ago, on a blog far, far away, I wrote about The Fallish Feeling. I defined this as βthe fact that everything that youβre attached to, disappears or ends naturally, and thereβs nothing you can do about itβ. This would be the soundtrack:
The last few months, Iβve clearly been suffering from The Fallish Feeling. The pandemic is of course partly to blame: 2020 was going to be the year in which I would finish up a couple of loose ends, and start up all kinds of new endeavors. In reality, all my plans for the year fell through. All of them.
Since I spend 99% of my time at home by myself and only venture into the outside world for medical appointments, my context specific interactions have also been reduced to almost zero. You know, those conversations in passing, with the neighbor, or the cashier at a store, or the person waiting with you at the bus stop.
Seeing that at this time in my life, Iβve been without classmates or coworkers for a while and that over the years, the amount of family, friends and acquaintances has dwindled from βnot a lot to begin withβ, to βabout fiveβ, these βbus stop interactionsβ have been a very important part of my daily social life.
These days, if I speak to one stranger a month on public transport, itβs often. Also, the conversations arenβt like they used to be: itβs all Covid, all the time. Which I do understand, but find exhausting nonetheless. The only place I do have the equivalent of those bus stop interactions, is on Instagram.
The internet has long been the place where I, independent of my IRL world status, could relatively easy stay in contact and exchange ideas with lots of people. This is why I tried to deny whatβs been happening for the last two years as long as I could: Instagram is dying.
Iβve been on the internet since 1996, and Iβve seen many a website, forum or social media platform be launched, thrive and then dwindle. I recognize the signs: No new followers, less interaction, fewer likes, people start posting less, the communication shifts to direct messages, people stop logging in, people delete their accounts.
Right now, 95% of my timeline consists of ads and βrecommended for youβ posts. Thereβs still some personal instastories from people I actually follow, but those too are becoming few and far between. Of course some of this is due to the pandemic and people having nothing to share/being exhausted, but this dwindling down of activity started way before Covid 19. When lockdown started here in The Netherlands in March, there was a spike in activity, but that ended sometime in June.
For everybody going: βMy time line is fine!β: Thatβs entirely possible. It all depends on when your friends/interactive followers quit the platform. Thereβs apparently still loads of people having a blast on Twitter in 2021, while I quit in 2012 after a year of basically talking to myself/a wall/outer space. And where I then moved on to Tumblr, and then Instagram, now thereβsβ¦ nothing.
As long as Iβve been on the internet, thereβs always been a new website, a new forum or a new social media platform to move on to. I have sadly lost people moving from one platform to the next, but a small group of people moved along with me. This time however, thereβs no new platform to move to.
Yeah, thereβs TikTok, but Iβm 45 years old and my life as a dancer is WAY behind me. Also, itβs a platform geared towards kids, as kids are the future (consumers). The painful reality is that the end of Instagram will not only mean the end of me-on-the-internet, but it will also be the end of online friendships Iβve had for sometimes close to 20 years.
I can already hear the βWell, meet up in real life!β In some cases, that would be impossible due to living on opposite ends of the world, or not even knowing who these people are IRL, as they, like me, have an online alias. #oldschool But even in the cases that people are known and closer, I donβt think IRL friendship will happen.
In my experience, thereβs a timeframe in which an online interaction needs to lead to IRL meetups for an IRL friendship to be possible. If you live 20 minutes away from each other and never (manage to) plan an IRL meetup in the 10, 15 years that youβre online friends, itβs just not going to happen anymore.
In this sense those decade long interactions that are strictly kept online are quite similar to context specific interactions like holiday friends, that coworker you always have lunch with, or that nice neighbor. As soon as you get back home, or find another job, or move house, you lose touch. It is fairly rare to find common ground outside of that particular context you interacted in and continue the friendship independently of said context.
This of course doesnβt mean that these context specific friendships donβt have any value or meaning. I value my online interactions as much as I value my offline interactions, I am well aware of there being actual, valuable people behind the profile, which makes this whole situation just so sad.
Ever since the internet became primarily an advertising medium, I have been very aware that there would come a time that I would be βtoo oldβ to be of demographic interest, and that that would eventually mean the end of my online life as I know it. Now that this moment is closer than ever however, it hurts more than I told myself it would.
Usually, I wish people βA happy [insert year here]!β This year however, Iβll leave it at βA better 2021!β. This of course inspired by the countinuous loop of Counting Crows lyrics that has been plaguing me for the last three weeks:
A long December and there’s reason to believe
Maybe this year will be better than the last
While New Year, New You is mostly nonsense every year, this year itβs complete hogwash. Weβre still in the middle of a pandemic, and it will take a while for everybody to be vaccinated. Even then itβs still a guess when the world will revert back to βnormalβ and what that βnormalβ will look like. Not that I have any hopes that this pandemic will lead to any drastic long lasting universal changes in regards to how we humans treat each other, other animals and the planet we live on.
As we have seen this year, the majority of people are extremely attached to the lifestyle theyβre used to and feel zero need to critically (re)consider their ideas and/or the way they live, let alone change anything about them. There are of course underlying societal structures in place with the sole goal of keeping things the way they are, but the lack of willingness to even consider adapting your life a tiny bit for βthe greater goodβ for lack of a better term, was some intense bullshit if you ask me. Compassion, more specifically the lack of it, was also a thing I didnβt expect to be, well, such a thing. I do believe that weβll eventually mostly go back to how things were βbeforeβ. There will of course be changes and certain things will not come back, but Iβm afraid that they will mostly be the types of things that were already undervalued and/or subsidized. Letβs hope Iβm wrong. And letβs also hope that I donβt have to find inspiration in Counting Crows lyrics next year, because DAMN.
Anyway, happy youβre all still here and a better 2021!