My mother used to tell me to not sit too close to the TV. Something about bad eyesight or it frying your brain, I never really cared, close was where I wanted to be Close to the action, close to the laughter, close to my "friends", often forgetting the foreign glow that separates us.
Now it is everywhere, everyone is always sitting too close to the TV, and I don't
think they know how to stop.
Like most, I own an ecosystem of technology and media. My earliest memories were of watching VHS tapes of Disney movies, and Saturday morning sitcom re-us Back then remember feeling a sense of safety. I know how this story goes, I know these characters and these storylines, and in 30-60 minutes everything will work out This ultimately made it easy for me to ignore the harshness of reality, and instead wisk myself away in my childhood imagination. While a coping of sorts, it's also a large part of my love of film and IV, it's why I love writing and creating and why my career even exists.
But, Day by day I find myself spending more time on my phone, or in front of the TV I try to reason it away by saying it is for work, but I know it feeds a loneliness that I am too busy to question. I let myself soak into whatever my screen is feeding me and I'm not sure I want to anymore. It's an honest thing, a very human thing, to interpret knowledge and emotion from each other as special or independently unique. Of course, the message on your for you page is meant just for you, no doubt the song playing on the radio was written for your ears only. I don't think it's a crime to relate to something so deeply it feels divine, I think that the transcendent connection that has made such an act capable is beautiful.
However, within this, it's hard to recognize how much of it is connection vs consumption.
In marketing, you're taught about all the ways a person might interact with something, and what path is best taken from product to person. Some things work best in your face, bold and accessible, while others are best served on a platter by peers, and sometimes without even noticing, they reach out like a friend.
I think that's what makes today's age of art, technology, status, and consumerism so hard. Everything is in one place and we let it act out in normalcy. We buy into the lives of those who try to sell it back to us, and slowly everything becomes a billboard or a product, even the people who never signed up to be one.
"Celebrities" today are a difficult definition. Still, the de-finable, affluent ones, hold a fan base dedicated and connected to each other and their subject. Before, you'd hear whispers in tabloids and the drama in the papers.
With the internet, what we care about and for has changed, as well as how we show it. At its best, you can stumble upon just about any community for anything your heart desires
From the niche to the vintage to the oddities of what creeps into Reddit communities. The purpose is to find and feel the beauty of art made by those who love what they do, but as we grow on, These bits and pieces, blurred lines of artist, art, and viewer, blend so easily with one another it's no wonder some forget they don't actually know the person on the other side. More than that, at its worst, they forget there even is a person on the other side. When it's all so close together, your ads, your friends, your admiration, the worlds leak into each other. you treat a person you're a fan of like a product you've purchased.
I often wonder what it might be like to hear public opinion on your choices or mistakes. If the world knew of my every embarrassing moment or mini breakdown, I'd never pick up a phone again, but still with ease we share and comment on the lives of celebrities, strangers, and even our own become outsourced content in favor of strangers on the internet.
If we're not careful, we consume the lives of people we don't know and forget to live our own.
Running away like this, hiding in the corners of our minds, numbing and holding out for mere resemblance to the world and a cure to our emptiness, steals pieces of our humanity little by little
How much is too much? When do we look down and discover we are being eaten alive?
Written and Photographed by Toni Desiree