The Voice in the Ear, The Face on the Screen

One of the biggest ironies of the modern world is that the internet: a technology built to connect all of humanity has only made humanity more isolated and hateful towards each other.

I took this irony to its logical, horrifying extreme in A Farewell to Humanity, a tale about people always being behind screens. It was a novella where the mimicry of nature and humanity is only ever skin deep and so on so forth.

One commentator wondered if the novella was about loneliness and I do think that is a valid reading. I have noticed how often I and a lot of people in and outside of my family are always on their devices.

The way in which the face on the screen just captures everyone (including me) is unsettling.

And I can’t stop.

My current living situation prevents me from a lot of social opportunities. Because of how remote it is and how uninviting the population are to those they deem outsiders (like me).

So, I have found myself, outside of the times when I go to the city, just interacting with people online. My social life is online most of the month. My university, my work and therapy are also all online.

And I do hate it. Even though I am funnelled into it in all parts of life. There seems to be less time to talk face to face, always just the voice in the ear, never in the room.

Technology has been able to connect me with people in such a way that would have proved impossible for me otherwise, but all I hear is a voice. Maybe a face on the screen.

When the option is either that or nothing, I will pick the thing that is more than nothing. But damn it is like subsisting on breadcrumbs.

Yet I can’t stop being in this space.

This horror I want to explore in other stories. But I don’t think I am the only one who has observed the ways in which we become parasitised by the Internet. Where we create our personas that we perform and the friendships you make with people you never see, not to mention the enemies that seemingly are everywhere.

We were always told that what happened on the internet doesn’t matter because it’s not a real place. I don’t believe this to be true. Sure, the anonymity of the internet frees us from the burden of consequences (until recently) but it is (mostly) occupied by real people. Even the bots still influence the humans that are there.

Now we cannot always tell if someone is real or not. And if they are real, are they authentic?

I have grappled with my own role in this. I am human. But how much of what I show to the internet as an aspiring public figure is the authentic me and how much is the performance of a version of me?

Am I interacting with such people who perform such feats of social performance? Are they who they say they are?

The only way I can thread this needle is to accept that they are real until proven otherwise. I act the same way I act in person. It’s easier than having to pretend as sooner or later you will forget to act.

While we do this in real life, the internet can provide the complete illusion of a new reality through the removal of body language, eye contact and even voice depending if we are on a voice call or not.

And it all is so isolating, all so lonely.

But what can we do?

One cannot do it alone; communities must want to be communities rather than bubbles of people unable to say hello in public.

I love to say hi to people on my morning walk. I like when they smile and say hi back. It’s that little piece of community that I often crave that you cannot find online.

It’s the impromptu conversations that you start up at the cash register. It’s the snippets of conversation you hear as you are in the library.

You can’t replicate that online. I miss it.

I truly do.

But we cannot stop using the internet. If we did, we would lose out on so much in work, international community and educational opportunities.

Yet we continue to get lonelier, yet we turn to tech to fulfill our needs while avoiding as much of the outside world as possible.

I think this makes our lives worse. We are social animals; we need to be sociable with real people or otherwise we will become lonelier.

The internet cannot be the sole means of social interaction.