When I was young, I remember occasionally going to my father on the weekend and saying that I was bored. His reply was always the same which was to go and find something to do, make something up. At the time, I figured he was too busy to play with me and this may have been correct. What I didn't realise at the time was that he was setting me upon a path that brings me to this day.
Humans have an amazing ability, it is called imagination or rather, simulation. This skill allows us to create and use an endless supply of tools with no more investment than a little time, a little information and a few volts of electricity to fire the neurons. There is the possibility to create entire worlds or test likely results of different design scenarios. We can imagine ourselves in different environments or others in ours. It is so powerful that for some, their imagination spills out into reality and they have trouble figuring which is which.
Being a little older, as a young child there was not a lot of access to many of the entertainment activities that exist now and parents didn't spend their time running kids to 5 or 6 different after school activities each week. Kids actually spent quite a lot of time alone or in small groups with very little if any organised activity. What they did was up to them. Freedom of movement and freedom of thought. There were still rules though and if caught crossing some lines, a smack was quick to arrive. I am not reminiscing here just trying to paint a little picture.
These days, there is a different approach to entertaining oneself. It is via consumption of someone elses imaginative creations such as gaming, Youtube, shopping and populating someone elses platform such as Facebook and Instagram. Often, these two things are combined where consumption in one area is shared as life events in the other. Facebook is filled with shared videos, Instagram swamped by products. It seems that every consumption, no matter how mundane, is worthy of an announcement to the world.
Gaming is an area I personally sunk a lot of time in, especially Ghost Recon and Battlefield. And I was good. And it felt great to annihilate opponents across the world. The games give rewards, incentives, unlocks and a plethora of statistics that keep the drive going, the eyes glued, the fingers twitching. One year, my stats for Battlefield showed I had played around 1600 hours. That is about 4/5 of a fulltime job. What was I good at? I stopped playing.
But this is the actual game. Feel consumption as a personal achievement. Progress in life. When it comes to shopping, cars are a good indicator. For many, it is not a tool to get them from A to B, it is symbol of status, a mark of advancement, an indicator of self-worth. Just like De Beers marketing diamond rings into a billion dollar industry a hundred years ago, all products are vying for a slice of our pie. And self-worth is a great influencer. A world where one's value is rated by the personal brand. Likes, thumbs ups, ticks, hearts, stars all get compiled into a log of value. The more the better. And it feels good. It gives the sense of moving forward. It feels like success.
And it is addictive. One leads to the next like any classic gateway drug. A new platform, a new model, a specialty colour, a new upgrade, a new map pack. The more resources we have, the more we invest. The first to opt-in, wins. A slight in-game advantage to build the stats a little faster before the plebs get a hold of it. Bragging rights as an early adopter, a trend maker, a forward thinker. How can it be forward thinking if it is the consumption of someone elses creation? Gamed.
Now back to the beginning. Our consumption habits come at a cost. Not just the money and time. Or the opportunity cost of professional skill development. It is coming at the cost of our imagination. Our children's imagination. Sucked into a world where all of the answers are provided. All the paths paved. A completely artificial world that leads us to believe we have control, while a team of behavioural psychologists, marketing experts and big data statisticians tweak the algorithms and the UI.
Engage them and they will stay forever.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
This is going to be an ongoing post that I aim to have each as a stand alone piece that will loosely fit with the next. I will not post these every day but as I work on them. Hopefully you will enjoy them and come on the journey and explore with me, if only out of morbid curiosity.