While looking for general inspiration, I opted for Are.na and found an interesting channel called how to exist slowly online by Aaron Krishna.
It started off well with the usual irreverant memes and interesting quotes—I liked this one from Annika Hansteen-Izora:
Instagram serves a lot of different purposes that it was never made for. It's become the mutual aid space, the mall, the community forum, the therapy couch. And it's failing at all of it. People are feeling unseen in so many different ways.
via New_ Public
But I noticed a certain tone amongst them. There was an infographic called The Rise of Dopamine Culture which made me think of how any social behaviour gets the word “culture” thrown on the end and it becomes monolithic and placed at the feet of the people who are “foolish” enough to maintain it. Or a tweet that likens people with loads of browser tabs open to a child trying to hold onto a moment that has already passed
(I’ve already talked about how we should stop comparing people to children when criticising them). And a quote about how “The Internet de-emphasizes text and emphasizes image” which I disagree with only because I think people do that on the Web as part of the Internet. Pendantic maybe but I think it’s important to be specific about who is really doing the things we critique instead of generalised terms that don’t really say anything. The Web was text-first from the beginning and any moves away from that, with multimedia and into what we have now, have been done by humans for capitalist gains.
I liked and agreed with elements of the channel but the bits that rubbed me up the wrong way reminded me how we’re quick to throw together soundbites and quotables to lament the end of human decency online when perhaps we should focus our ire on what people who have made conditions worse for us all. Sometimes “we” isn’t actually “we” and there needs to be more specificity. Talk about the dead internet theory all you like but we as creatives and Web users can and should be welcoming and nurturing so people who might want to make a website or bring a project to the Web can feel like it’s going to flourish rather than throwing hands up and exhaling like a mechanic declaring an inflated bill to a customer.
So we can slow down while existing online but it doesn’t have to remain slow or even grind to a dead halt. Let the pace be variable. Speed up when you feel the passion and drive to be there. Slow down when it’s negatively impacting you. Go outside, touch grass, etc. etc. but don’t feel bad for wanting to tell your friends on a microblogging site and show them pictures.
Buy me a coffee or a pledge!
