In case you missed it, in part 1 Geiger spoke about how smartphones and social media are leading us to a loss of intimacy and no longer doing things “for ourselves”. In part 2, he expands on this concept, talking about how certain behaviors that seemed strange just up until two years ago have been completely normalized. Our sociality has seemingly been turned – by tech companies – into a popularity contest. With major consequences…
In case the video above doesn’t work, here it is: https://vimeo.com/307695238/f305430bdb
The full transcript:
This collection of little stories that we are being asked to create… the idea is to do storytelling. We all do storytelling, we are all actors of our lives, all day long, and it leads to a tendency to believe that happiness, success, even love… all this is a matter of popularity. And that’s a huge change, I think, from previous generations. When I tell other generations about it and see how it happened, even in my own development… And so the question is just to be seen. You have to be present (online). And that’s a real pressure because you have to be there, all day long. So people, they start taking videos of themselves on the street, making stupid faces, with rabbit ears… posting their breakfast… Any moment of life becomes a kind of popularity bargaining chip, to show that either you spend money, or you have cool friends… you have to make it look like you have a great life. And in fact we spend more time editing this “great life”, making good “Stories”, super well edited, than really living it. Because it would be so stupid to live all this without informing the whole world… And in fact it became natural, this trend. Even I have an Instagram account, I publish stuff. Here I am in a beautiful place on vacation, I’m going to take some nice pictures… I think that a large part of the population, especially my generation, is doing this. There are so many people who are accumulating so much frustration at constantly having to make people believe they have a great life. Well, I think that this is going to evolve at some point. I feel like right now we’re at this peak of a totally disconnected ego trip. And I think that people are starting to share this feeling of “It’s still strange, why do people do that?” So here I am, I have a little hope. But I guess, the future will tell us.
