Fiction is easy to consume-even mountains of it. Here we are, in a time where rapid
consumption of data is the normal. Even data about ourselves that we might
perhaps find deeply unimportant to our lives (stopped by a Mall ‘X’ last week), seems
to elicit great interest from bigwigs.
So now, back to my train of thought, why have we suddenly begun to
consume so much data? Why, suddenly, are we being to driven to melt the walls
of reality around us? Why are we suddenly being compelled to drown ourselves
entirely into lives that are not ours? Taking the scroll stroll along FB and Instagram isn’t just
mild curiosity in the lives of people we don’t know too well. It is looking at
the prettiest-possible pictures of acquaintances (and them, of us), enjoying
the times of their lives, and then allowing the standstill traffic to vanish
around us as the white screen envelopes us. After an hour of looking at smiling
faces, fancy plates of food, smiling faces eating the fancy plates of food,
smiling faces eating fancy plates of food in far off, beautiful locations, what
am I left with, when my mind returns to the traffic? When I become completely
and utterly aware of how lonely I am, of how I am not smiling in a lovely
restaurant, with a beautiful view, with a man I could declare my love for. So
that’s one thing I’ve wanted to talk about.
Another is the trouble with video content.
Like I said, fiction is easy to consume. It took me several years of
reading to be able to finish a non-fiction book. I enjoyed it, but fiction was
far easier. I fell in love, cried, laughed and everything else-without being
impacted by the reality of it all. Reading was great. Back then, TV wasn’t. But
now, TV is great too. A lot of shows are translations of terribly gripping and
moving novels-making them all worth a watch. But TV now isn’t restricted to
consumption of the story alone. So as the viewer, I once seek gratification as
a direct consumer of fictional content. But after I have finished the series or
the movie, I want to know-who are the people who played the leads? Who are the
people who played my favourite characters? Can they sing in real life? Can they
really paint, as well as their characters do? Are they as funny in real life
too? The actors appear as alter egos of the characters that build stories around themselves. So then, I begin to
watch interviews of these actors, consuming my secondary fictional content.
They are rich, beautiful, have interesting things to say, are famous, loved by
everyone, and best of all, are distant enough for me to think of their world as
fiction, being played out, somehow, in reality. They are right at the cusp. How
scintillating, to know that a world of fiction can be half-entered into. How
thrilling, to know that one can dance between fiction and reality, and that
that very dance makes one so rich and so famous? Zooming out, on the bigger scale, what are we, really, if we’re
not craving for adoration and respect from most humans, i.e., how big is the
tribe that recognizes me, my achievements, my value-don’t we all want that?
But why, suddenly do we find ourselves in a situation where we are so
desperate to leave our realities behind us?
Is it because we have always wanted to be distracted from our lives and
only now we are able to be? Have our lives always held no interest to us? When
all our fundamental needs are satisfied, what is left is our mind, which,
perhaps is always looking for new ways to keep itself amused. The continuous
stream of video content finds new ways to engage our human emotions in
constantly-new ways.
And then there’s the other tack of what drives members of our
race-restlessness triggered by desire. Constantly binge-watching satisfies both
of these, should I say ‘demons’? (Probably not, because they lead us to
success, don’t they?)
So let’s say that most of us are slightly absent in our own lives. And
let’s say that scrolling and watching raises our momentary happiness quotient. A
couple of questions I'll leave you here with, then a. Is there a problem in living slightly absent
lives? If so, what is it? (Is the only way to maximise living, being immersed in your reality?)
and b. what is the long-term impact of content consumption on our happiness quotients(instant
gratification vs feelings of loneliness and ennui)
