The Silicon Age Circus Maximus
"The Watcher built a Colosseum.
There the infinite Circus preforms.
The Cyberplebians leave their souls at the gates.
You're free to leave when you wish.
But why would you ever want to bear the pain of thought ever again?
Let The Watcher soothe your soul."
The "Metaversal Hotel California" I referred to in my previous piece definitely expands far far beyond the confines of VR and bleeds out way across the Wired. Endless-yet shrinking social media hub-worlds of endless content, endless Sovl-rotting slop. Yet, most of us find ourselves unable to look away, unable to unplug. Even the most powerful Newtypes of the Silicon Age all seem to fall prey to some sort of media distractions. I fall prey to it plenty, my ceaseless watching of films or TV series. Others have their VidyaTM, others still have their Animu, their Manga, their Comics, and so on. Most fall prey to all of these at once, absolutely burning away their time and shutting off their minds to just consume and be entertained.
The horrors of living make it quite easy and in fact preferable to simply Check Out physically and mentally and let the Circus Maximus of the Digital-Silicon Age fry one's dopamine/serotonin inhibitors while your body deteriorates and your daily life becomes a fugue state intermission in between media consumption blocs. I do not look down upon those of us (most of us) who suffer this affliction, the Wired and the Malignant forces who have long-since subverted and wrangled it, akin to Daemonic Ranchers corralling the masses into increasingly smaller and smaller digital islands. It was all designed specifically for this purpose, plans laid long ago to melt the minds of all individuals connected to the Wired, and have them begging for more. "Turn up the slop-inhibitors" "Waiter! Waiter! More Dogshit Please!" "Calcify your pineal gland! Only $15.99/month (with ads)".
The slimiest of Roman Senators and Politicians could never in a hundred trillion years imagine the levels of "Bread and Circuses" their distant descendant-states could cook up. If anything, one would figure they would be appalled at the horrors inflicted upon humanity in the name of distraction-based oppression, feeding everyone poisons and chemicals, turning everyone into soft and squishy docile creatures who'd drop dead if they had to run a mile. The whole physical aspect of this phenomenon is incredibly worrying, however, the real concern is moreso centered around the intellectual and spiritual erosion of humanity at large.
If you fix the soul, you can repair the mind, and attempts at the body will more easily follow suit. But the first gruelling and seemingly impossible step is exiting the Circus Maximus itself. Pulling away from the bleeps and bloops of the life-force draining succubusal distractions we are bombarded with 24/7. At the very least you can turn down the dial some, close some tabs, set your phone down and out of reach on silent. I know you've heard it all before. Yet, many still can't pull away.
The comforts, false-happiness, and ease of use provided by the Circus Maximus is its most dangerous aspect. You might think the "Bread" part of the metaphor may be used literally in this sense with the increased simplicity of just ordering all of your meals and snacks to be delivered directly to you by some Nu-Serf for triple the price of just going outside. We've even hit the point where you can just have alcohol and other drugs delivered to you directly. That is a whole other fattening and maddening rabbit hole to go down and is partially irrelevant. The "Bread" we're talking about here is that of the "Happy Chemicals at the scroll of a mouse wheel (or swipe of a touchscreen)" the expertly crafted, attention stealing feeds of short-form content that every single major platform has enforced over the last few years. With the addition of the ego-boosting attention received from engagement farming posts - and the prospect of monetization motivating "people" to produce even more Digital Litter, polluting the Wired with the most bottom-line, abysmal creations ever conceived. Now it has degraded/advanced to the point of being able to practically automate the content creation process.
The forces of the Committee are truly demonic, what they have done to us should be unforgivable.
Things are so rampant, and degenerating so quickly, that we've reached a rather dire state. The only real solution appears to be Scorched Earth-Net. Reversing and cleaning up the absolutely disgustingly defaced surface net is a Sisyphean task, only a boom of Splinternets (aka the Balkanization of the Net) sprouting off of the branches of the OldWeb can really preserve and save humanity from the ROT. Even then, the people themselves need to go through some sort of self-imposed Rehab-Detox from the effects of the current web.
I myself, am quite frustrated, as I too am victim to this (if it was not already immensely clear from "The Neo-Metaversal Narcissus"). My attention span for more productive projects has eroded, when I am writing these Articles, or short stories, or even note-taking for world building projects. I constantly find myself distracted, checking my phone to see what nightmares are occurring on Xitter dot com or other adjacent social media (thankfully I despise all short-from content to such a degree I've gone out of my way to block such things on my devices), or tabbing over to a browser on my desktop to see what is going on on various forums I lurk from time to time or what news is shared amongst friends. Or literally right this moment looking at RemiliaNET and catching beetles with cheese... I cannot say that I am truly immune to sinking into the comforting distraction of the Digital Circus, but I am at the very least aware of its true malicious purpose and wish to make an attempt to escape its stranglehold.
The direct pipeline that lead to such conditions can quite easily be seen, you can go back as far as you wish and from many, many angles, but I feel like the beginning of this sort of thing was really set in motion via the TV/media/news boom of the 60s-80s with nonstop fear-mongering about all sorts of things, the Cold War, increasing visceral violence being beam directly into everyone's living rooms, suddenly caused a whole generation to be paranoid about letting their kids be free to roam around, socialize and have adventures. This pushed people inside, closer to the TV and the incoming times of video games and computers (As opposed to going to the evil arcades where you 100% will be kidnapped and murdered! - CNN). At first the excuses might have been safety, but it evolved once the serial killer craze began to die off, instead it was more about "convenience" why go out when you have games and entertainment at home? Sure you could invite your friends over to play split-screen Halo on the Xbox, or Mario Kart Double Dash on the GameCube, your circles definitely began to shrink because of this.
Eventually online gaming boomed and you no longer needed to even go to see your friends in person to play with them. But as the Wired grew and spread, the further away you felt from the people you once knew in person, leaving you to wander and interact with strangers from far away creating all sorts of strange new mingling happening and cultural exchanges. However. The key here was that you were still isolated in your day to day life, and those online-only lads weren't around 24/7, so you had to fill your free time with other hobbies, but as entertainment options ballooned, and endless content began to flood the wired 24/7 unabated, things began to get much worse and very quickly all with the goal of commodifying your attention. Mix that with the outside world losing all aesthetic wonder and whimsy, and the "24 HOUR AMERICA/WORLD" quickly vanishing as high trust societies lost all trustworthiness, as work became infinitely more soul crushing and time consuming for the average person, as going out to do anything became unaffordable, all you are left with in your tiny dark apartments are your tiny Silicon Windows into the Circus Maximus.
This is why I find true creative processes that require serious time and effort to both work on, and even to just research topics, learn techniques, troubleshoot and design more complex pieces to be very therapeutic almost. Pouring you soul into creative or educational endeavours, or anything of the sort really, anything to avoid falling into the deepest pitfalls of slop-consumption. It also explains my disdain of Streamer "Culture" and all of the destruction that has contributed to the Wired at large as well as people directly. I find the whole concept so appalling, it is incredibly predatory despite how much you spout "It's just for fun!" especially with the dawn of the Virtual Chubas - one might argue that it loops around to requiring effort but it's quite rare that any of them actually do the designs themselves instead of just paying others or simply being hired to play as these characters for a pre-existing audience. It's acting, but objectively worse since they pretend to acknowledge the existence of many a lonely poor saps with nothing better to do than tune into a nothing-stream (don't forget sapping them of funds and their attention). Don't get me wrong though, I do understand the sentiment, having a pleasant and comforting voice (despite the fact most of them spend their streams shrieking like animals) to keep you company in your lonely little place late at night after a long day at work, without the hassle of going through the hell of modern dating. Simply something to quench the loneliness, perhaps they'll make you laugh a bit or call out your username the rare time, but it still seems like such a shame. We should not be living like this.
There's something to be said about more interesting video essayists or reviewers who go into major deep dives in to fascinating topics and concepts, plenty of good inspiration to take from those types. Or those who go over historical, philosophical, and religious themes in fresh, modern perspectives. Creations that actually serve some sort of purpose beyond solely being entertainment or background noise to keep the droning and spiraling thoughts at bay. It's food for thought as they say, somewhat genuine nourishment to get the old and rusty mental gears turning. As opposed to the oh-so-sweet carb-filled bread that is most other CONTENT - things that fatten the soul. This is also angled more towards audio/visual content as opposed to say, writing or art or the combination of the two. There is still plenty of wonderful things being made that inspire and cause people to feel feelings. Which should be self-evident.
This discussion is more of a concerned plea to try and pull back the veil of the Hypnotizing Silicon-Digital Circus, don't let it pull you into that comfortable bed of nostalgia and escape 24/7. You are wasting too much time on meaningless escapism. Reality is genuinely at stake, war for the Soul of Man wages eternally and we must all do our best to stand up for ourselves and fight back - even something as simple as trying to do daily doodles, or tiny short stories, poetry, anything you can pour your soul into genuinely, even as simple as wishing to poast your way into the future. Anything at all.
Do not let the Committee win.
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