Getting in Touch the Soul Again

Something has gone missing. Dead Internet theory has been decrying the lack of soul online for almost a decade. But now even the human generated content feels as aimless and just as algorithmically driven as the slop that proliferates so much of our online spaces. The heart is gone. Reason for posting and sharing something has been twisted and warped into a clamouring for views, likes, duets, reposts & remixing. Above all the motive of being able to sustain yourself through shit posting has taken even those with enough means already, like certain tech billionaires, down to play in the muck.

Our why became shallow and gaunt. We’re losing touch with the real world, it’s problems too big, the brutality of modern existence where we have everything yet own nothing, can change nothing and must watch on the sidelines in excruciating detail as wars are waged in senseless barbarism. Driven by an ever increasing onslaught of information we’ve taken on the guise that all knowledge is available so everything must be known, but knowledge is not wisdom. There is no mystery anymore, all information can be recalled with less than effort, our minds are an overflowing sink nothing sticks for long before being swept up in the current of over produced influencers, AI slop, marketing & advertising, climate catastrophe, war or political atrocity, casual sexism/racism/minority bashing, etc. So we turn away from those razor sharp edges and bitter realities to curate and conjure the facet viewable en masse, through our many digital facades. Even when the true feelings break through it’s a cry for connection via the algorithm, “where are my people that…”, “does anyone else feel…” The hyper individualism of the modern world has bereft us of community and so now we turn to digital spaces for connection in our, often unwilling, curated bubbles.

Others go the far opposite, wearing a grotesque over exaggeration of their most divisive and inflammatory points of view. Using their digital avatar like a scorching lash they burn through any civility or empathy aiming for the often meaningless one-upping and conquering of the marketplace of ideas in halls of their own echo chambers. Even these firebrands are confined to their corners of the internet, devolving into circles of regurgitated talking points, conspiracy theories and paranoia induced memery.

Algorithmic determinism herds us to a bland and banal internet. Truly original content, driven for purely artistic expression, completely devoid of the profit motive, detached from the influencer sphere, pulled from the individual as by an invisible hand truly the soul making its mark. This seems in short supply on the modern internet, relegated to the double digit pages in the web search results, driven into oblivion by the algorithms in the tech fiefdoms. Finding the authentic has become a treasure hunt in the cosmos of the world wide web.

Possibly the greatest thing we’ve lost is our ability to handle anything with the slightest rough hewn edge. If it isn’t perfectly crafted, some monumental undertaking, an artwork rivalling the precision and polish of the finest masters, an oration or prose to rival that of the great classics; we turn away scrolling on to the next when we hur the slightest bump of friction.

We’ve lost our spark, the connection that makes a project or prototype or random doodle work enough, worth enough, to simply say “look at this thing I made” and have that, be enough.