Prisoners of Our Own Mind
The āchallenge of absent presenceā is definitely a challenge that many human beings are going through in this day in age. Due to the coronavirus, people went from averaging four hours of social media a day to seven plus hours.There seems to be a mix up between reality and fantasy has led the community with the awareness of social media consumption as a problem or as a solution. The Black Mirror episode, āThe Entire History of Youā, shows a reality where a chip is inserted in humans giving them the capability to film, rewind and zoom in on the memories from their sight. This overwhelmingly relates to todayās age because Elon Musk has already created such chip devices for the similar attributes from the episode. People are really weirded out by the idea of this chip possibly being used regularly in the future. However, this episode has a lot to do with how human beings interact today without the chip, but within the social media apps on their phones. Everything can be saved, deleted and posted which can lead to someoneās uprising in fame or depletion of career and status. Baym states, āKenneth Gergen (2002) describes us as struggling with the āchallenge of absent presence,ā worrying that too often we inhabit a āfloating worldā in which we engage primarily with non-present partners despite the presence of flesh-and-blood people in our physical location. We may be physically present in one space yet mentally and emotionally engaged elsewhereā. It has become a norm to be present to the phone more so than the reality in front of our eyes. Especially with the conditions of the coronavirus, it has led people to continue to reach out to people through the social media platforms than in person meetings. Zoom has become the new party club, school and graduation place for 2020.
Although, it is much āsaferā to be away from one another at this unfortunate time, people are missing out on the true importance and value of human love and touch does to the mind, body and soul of being. People are already judgmental in person, but through social media there is a disconnect from spam accounts and humans being cruel to one another on a constant basis. Being able to go back and see the history of oneās social media posts and using it for justification and basis of definition of who that person is has become very alarmingly unfair for some. We see it played out in the episode when Liam suspects that his wife, Ffion, is cheating with Jonas. Liam goes back in his memory and replays his past and drinks himself mad. Although his gut feeling was correct that Ffion had cheated on him, the replays of memories drove him to insanity. He knew that it was time to take out the chip device and be free from the prison of his mind. This can also go for social media and people driving themselves to insanity watching the negative posts or fantasizing a what-if scenario based off posts from social media. It is important to free your mind from the madness and never ending cycle of social media posts. We are stronger than what the government frames us not to be.
Do you believe that we can find a better way to communicate than through social media in the nearby healthy future?