Flower

4y

No I know what you are saying. People in Buddhism call it enlightenment, it's what Jesus was trying to explain people, also what atheists and bohemians are trying to explain to religious people. We are too afraid of falling and the suffering/pain that comes from breaking free. It feels easier to just stay inside the simulations and bubbles we create or others create for us than to leave them and risk getting our bubbles burst by reality.
We're scared of being out of the loop, being outsiders. You gotta get a job, a house, a family, a dog, a car or you're weird and people start talking about what is wrong with you and why you don't want to be happy... Don't have IG or Facebook, ok. But imagine if you told anyone that you don't have a smartphone because you think it makes people live in their Ivory towers and it has caused society to be more divided and anti-social than ever in history? People will tell you that YOU are the one living in an Ivory tower, not them. I type too much sry but yeah just the way I see it.

Flower

4y

People seem to be okay with not reaching their own dreams as long as they can experience them through others. We spend hours on YouTube, IG, Twitter looking at things we will never be able to afford but seeing celebrities we like sharing their success online makes us feel like we co-own it. This is why people get so invested into who their favs are dating, where they are going, who they talking to. Like Ariana Grande stans. They all have avis/pfps of their icon not because they look up to her but because they like to think that they're all one and the same and Ariana is an extension of their personality, a literal avatar.
They give up their own personality to assume the personality of who they admire. My point is everyone does that. We all love virtuality, the quality of having the attributes of something without sharing their real or imagined physical form and since we are the first generations to do so we don't know what the long-term consequences are yet and even worse, we still haven't had a serious scholarly discussion about this although Google and Apple are trying to fight it with their wellbeing apps that turn your phone off at night or whatever to help you snap back into reality. Anyway can I go back to posting avis now?

allinasecond

4y

!although Google and Apple are trying to fight it with their wellbeing apps that turn your phone off at night or whatever to help you snap back into reality."

expand on this fam

Flower

4y

No I know what you are saying. People in Buddhism call it enlightenment, it's what Jesus was trying to explain people, also what atheists and bohemians are trying to explain to religious people. We are too afraid of falling and the suffering/pain that comes from breaking free. It feels easier to just stay inside the simulations and bubbles we create or others create for us than to leave them and risk getting our bubbles burst by reality.
We're scared of being out of the loop, being outsiders. You gotta get a job, a house, a family, a dog, a car or you're weird and people start talking about what is wrong with you and why you don't want to be happy... Don't have IG or Facebook, ok. But imagine if you told anyone that you don't have a smartphone because you think it makes people live in their Ivory towers and it has caused society to be more divided and anti-social than ever in history? People will tell you that YOU are the one living in an Ivory tower, not them. I type too much sry but yeah just the way I see it.

allinasecond

4y

!although Google and Apple are trying to fight it with their wellbeing apps that turn your phone off at night or whatever to help you snap back into reality."

expand on this fam

mrunusual

4y

society

things that we do on the daily that shouldn’t be normal but we just accept it because

Flower

4y

No I know what you are saying. People in Buddhism call it enlightenment, it's what Jesus was trying to explain people, also what atheists and bohemians are trying to explain to religious people. We are too afraid of falling and the suffering/pain that comes from breaking free. It feels easier to just stay inside the simulations and bubbles we create or others create for us than to leave them and risk getting our bubbles burst by reality.
We're scared of being out of the loop, being outsiders. You gotta get a job, a house, a family, a dog, a car or you're weird and people start talking about what is wrong with you and why you don't want to be happy... Don't have IG or Facebook, ok. But imagine if you told anyone that you don't have a smartphone because you think it makes people live in their Ivory towers and it has caused society to be more divided and anti-social than ever in history? People will tell you that YOU are the one living in an Ivory tower, not them. I type too much sry but yeah just the way I see it.

allinasecond

4y

!although Google and Apple are trying to fight it with their wellbeing apps that turn your phone off at night or whatever to help you snap back into reality."

expand on this fam

Flower

4y

It's basically investors and employees at Google, Apple, Mozilla and Twitter have noticed that the things they created for us share our lives with have become our lives. So they started this org, Center for Humane Technology in 2013:
https://humanetech.com/

They are the ones who have been lobbying to get Apple and Google to implement Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing to help people realize how much time they spend on their phones and in apps. Tbh the whole thing was started by this former Google employee Tristan Harris. It's really worth watching his TED or pretty much anything you can find from him on YouTube. He talks about the attention economy and how companies have created what is basically the proto-Matrix where we have become slaves to their products through manipulative advertising that makes us believe that we need all of their things to feel adequate. Companies like Google collect data about us and they produce a virtual version of us to figure out what we might like and then send us products and recommendations based on that. I think the thing we don't realize is it's not just Google.

Every big company is doing that and we have been hooked since birth to the point where we can't even be sure if we genuinely want something or if we have been manipulated into thinking that we want it. The biggest criminal is actually Walt Disney Company. They got us hooked with their movies early on, have us dreaming about unrealistic worlds, relationship scenarios, and careers we can never achieve so they built merch, Disneyland, TV channels and streaming services to have us live out the "dreams" they implanted into us through the manipulative messaging in their movies. But if you point out that Disney should be banned from manipulating young children for profit you will only get backlash from parents ala "you're destroying their childhood, let them dream". But those are not their own dreams... they are the dreams implanted into them by a giant corporation and it will f*** up how they see the world and themselves. You see what I mean by proto-Matrix? They don't have direct control of our conscious, but they control our subconscious, our dreams and desires and found a way to convince us that those dreams are our own. And you gonna be like @​OP telling them to wake up and they will say they're already woke and this is what they want and you don't know what you are talking about and you're just a pessimist why can't you be "normal" yada yada... It's hard to make your case that you are normal when you're in the minority.
smh I hope I expanded on that I dunno. I feel like I'm ranting. I just hope I made sense. And don't look at me as an example to break out of this. I chose the life. I chose the lie.

Flower

4y

It's basically investors and employees at Google, Apple, Mozilla and Twitter have noticed that the things they created for us share our lives with have become our lives. So they started this org, Center for Humane Technology in 2013:
https://humanetech.com/

They are the ones who have been lobbying to get Apple and Google to implement Screen Time and Digital Wellbeing to help people realize how much time they spend on their phones and in apps. Tbh the whole thing was started by this former Google employee Tristan Harris. It's really worth watching his TED or pretty much anything you can find from him on YouTube. He talks about the attention economy and how companies have created what is basically the proto-Matrix where we have become slaves to their products through manipulative advertising that makes us believe that we need all of their things to feel adequate. Companies like Google collect data about us and they produce a virtual version of us to figure out what we might like and then send us products and recommendations based on that. I think the thing we don't realize is it's not just Google.

Every big company is doing that and we have been hooked since birth to the point where we can't even be sure if we genuinely want something or if we have been manipulated into thinking that we want it. The biggest criminal is actually Walt Disney Company. They got us hooked with their movies early on, have us dreaming about unrealistic worlds, relationship scenarios, and careers we can never achieve so they built merch, Disneyland, TV channels and streaming services to have us live out the "dreams" they implanted into us through the manipulative messaging in their movies. But if you point out that Disney should be banned from manipulating young children for profit you will only get backlash from parents ala "you're destroying their childhood, let them dream". But those are not their own dreams... they are the dreams implanted into them by a giant corporation and it will f*** up how they see the world and themselves. You see what I mean by proto-Matrix? They don't have direct control of our conscious, but they control our subconscious, our dreams and desires and found a way to convince us that those dreams are our own. And you gonna be like @​OP telling them to wake up and they will say they're already woke and this is what they want and you don't know what you are talking about and you're just a pessimist why can't you be "normal" yada yada... It's hard to make your case that you are normal when you're in the minority.
smh I hope I expanded on that I dunno. I feel like I'm ranting. I just hope I made sense. And don't look at me as an example to break out of this. I chose the life. I chose the lie.