Perpetual online connectivity produces numbness without genuine connection
Evidence
I’m just speculating here, but I wonder if it has anything to do with a dissatisfaction with Internet culture, the sort of brittle, distracted numbness that comes from being meshed into a state of perpetual connectivity, but without any real connection of the kind that comes from either one-onone interactions or from being in a crowd. The rise of the podcast and the online DJ mix, which has been hyped as “the new rave” but is profoundly asocial, seems to fit in here. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk, 1246
Categorization
- QUESTION: Fisher is openly speculating; the causal link between internet saturation and the new post-dubstep emotionality is a hypothesis worth testing against later cultural evidence.
- XREF: connects to: Withdrawal from screens can enable better connection than constant visibility — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1225; Internet connectivity reduces everything and everyone to a resource for use — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 1022; Digital connectivity often produces communion among lonely people — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life: Writings on…, 494 (+3 more)
Broader Connections
- Internet connectivity reduces everything and everyone to a resource for use
#corroborates(0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1022 - Pandemic-era hyper-connectivity coincided with heightened social isolation
#corroborates(0.85) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 644 - Digital connectivity often produces communion among lonely people
#contradicts(0.80) — Mark Fisher, Ghosts of My Life, 494 - Connectivity transmits unchanged information while sensitivity transforms its participants
#expands(0.80) — Jenny Odell, How to Do Nothing, 109 - Resting-state visual-network connectivity drops when visual stimulation is absent
#exemplifies(0.75)