Stream of consciousness

This is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. The world is moving at a rapid pace. Not just moving, but also moving on. Things that were once talked about for weeks, months or years are now just a micro blip within an infinite flood of content. Everything is competing for a slice of attention at a scale I’ve never seen before. What was once marketing now just feels like a sad dance within a horrifying spectacle of noise.

With AI this feeling has become extremely amplified. It’s an onslaught of noise. The web has been injected a super dose of garbage, drowning out everything. The strategy in this current climate is barraging the world with relentless reality altering content cannons. The technology exists to do this with such little friction. Does anyone really have a chance when the common strategy now is to scream 24/7?

I remember when someone first told me to sign up for Instagram and Twitter after showing me a meme. It was like taking a huge drag out a mouth full of cigarettes. They didn’t know what they were inflicting on me. I lost a part of my life that day. More recently I’ve managed to have a more healthy distance from these platforms. But I know many people hopelessly attached to them, always in a state of anxiety and fatigue.

This feeling of rapid movement lives offline too. I go to one big event or complete some major project, and as soon as it’s done I have little time to process it. I’m thrust to the next event, task, or back into the daily rhythms of life and its constant need to grab my attention away from reflection. Nothing has an epilogue. Everything in life is a notification waiting to be read. A brief acknowledgement before the next 10 pings make me forget. Even government is no longer slow. Policies are being approved at break neck speeds. It’s become horrendously fast at ruining lives.

Whole industries are being completely uprooted, dismantled, and transformed. Everything someone learned a few years ago is irrelevant because the world does not want to slow down. You train one skill only for it to be replaced with a new skill a few months later. Being comfortable with a boring sought after skill has morphed into being uncomfortable all the time with infinite boring skills. It’s no surprise that the sentiment to live alone in a forest is more prevalent. It’s a comforting thought akin to being a child with no responsibilities or connection to a larger scarier world.

I’m not saying anything revolutionary or different. I’m just expressing an unsettling feeling that seems to be getting louder. A deafening noise that I thought had reached an upper limit. There’s no time to fully sink into an emotion. This speed of existence is not normal to me. I lack any type willpower to fight against this. I know what happiness looks like. It’s when I step outside, away from all of this. Away from what this paradigm shift in culture has touched.

I have almost found that joy. It just requires me to finally accept that many valuable things that I have ever gained in life will be lost in some way. It’s accepting that I will be missing out on a lot of opportunities. My dream is to not fear any of that and to fully live a new branch of life. One with experiences, connections, and creations that I could never imagine before. This noise is about to destroy me, and it might finally be for the better.