Filter bubbles and branded identities block the encounters that change us

Evidence

Extrapolating this into the realm of strangers, I worry that if we let our real-life interactions be corralled by our filter bubbles and branded identities, we are also running the risk of never being surprised, challenged, or changed—never seeing anything outside of ourselves, including our own privilege. That’s not to say we have nothing to gain from those we have many things in common with (on paper). But if we don’t expand our attention outside of that sliver, we live in an “I-It” world where nothing has meaning outside of its value and relation to us. And we’re less prone to the encounters with those who turn us upside down and reorganize our universe—those who stand to change us significantly, should we allow it. — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 474

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘I-It’ phrase directly invokes Martin Buber’s I and Thou — a connection worth noting for the reader’s analysis of Odell’s intellectual ancestry.
• DEFINE: “I-It” world is Odell’s key term for instrumentally valuing everything only relative to oneself — central to her definitional apparatus.