20/20 vision

Hurtling towards the end times

There’s this line in George Trow’s “Within The Context of No Context” that I always come back to: “What was powerful grew more powerful in ways that could be easily measured, grew less powerful in every way that could not be measured.” And as the decade crashes towards its end, I’m finding myself gravitating back to the essay. It’s a peculiar source of comfort, how a (very nearly) 40-year-old text can bring about a sense of closure⁠—like looking into one’s family history to uncover previously unexplained parts of the self, these little pieces of the past act as an oracle upon insights bubbling beneath. Nothing has changed, yet everything has changed.

What’s changed? I’m one of those “xennials” who saw my most formative years of adulthood during this decade, one of those sort-of digital natives who saw the internet change from multiple anonymised, decentralised spaces into one that seeks to consolidate power in only a few spaces, demanding “accountability” as a form of surveillance. In this time, Twitter transformed from a “microblog” (I was mostly talking to myself) into a “hellsite”; the on-demand economy took shape across the world; radical politics atrophied into mere slogans; “introversion” turned into a boastful assertion that ironically existed alongside online sociality; context collapse became normalised; cynicism led the race while sincerity trailed behind. We can blame it on the rise of neoliberalism, the era of the personal brand, the conflation of work and leisure, the fetishisation of burn-out… the list goes on, and yet the penchant for envy and aversion to shame has remained the same.

It’s only natural: when there is an acute sense of freaky disorder, nostalgia is never far behind. Accordingly, I’ve noticed many wistful yearnings for the “old internet”, a time of MySpace, messageboards, Livejournal and the like. This is often paired with resolutions for less: less social media, less technology, a return to nature, implorations to “live in the moment”. They imply a feeling of powerlessness: perhaps by divesting power from the institutions which seek to monitor and sell our selves back to us, we can finally break free from our mortal coils. But does creating these binaries result in less desire? What do people want?

That said, I’m also one of those people whose existence would not⁠ coalesce into the one now if not for the internet. Many things I know now, I learnt online (I didn’t go to university); it was through the internet that I understood the meaning of friendship (I had a socially isolated childhood and adolescence); I met my current partner through the internet (I organised tours for random DIY-punk bands in my 20s); I built a writing career through the internet (most of my work can only be found online). There are other less relevant threads which I won’t belabour, but what remains pertinent is how inextricably intertwined I am to this intangible connection that is, at the same time, solidified through connection. It’s hardly exceptional⁠—many children of the internet can attest to this, but it’s a reluctant admission. I don’t wear this on my sleeve.

To me, the conversation surrounding the “old internet” seems to be about reframing boredom and decreasing anxiety. Reclaiming wonder. For all the times my short-term memory has forgotten an event I didn’t bother to document as a digital image, I’ve had other people’s business literally at my fingertips. For all the times I’ve winced at the erroneous use of “literally” on social media, I’ve witnessed people do unprecedented things with the tools now available. For all the times I’ve lamented “nerd” culture online, I’ve excused myself to the bathroom to look up a reference I didn’t understand but didn’t dare admit (but now you know). For all the times I feel surveilled 24/7—both by myself and others—I’ve come across a world which I’d never had the opportunity to step in otherwise. What do people want?

I suppose this is my decade ender. Another thing I often revisit is Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, birthed out of the Situationist movement. The entire book is a bleak joy, and continues to be more relevant as society moves towards what Byung Chul-han terms “psychopolitics”. It is indeed true that the clutches of production are more visible and insidious than ever before, but who’s to say that it is impossible to recalibrate its means? And in what I foresee to be a decade of the aesthetics of the aesthetic, here’s a final bit of nostalgia: under the paving stones, the beach!