Stories & Reels vs. Lives & Real

I’m not sure who is responsible for the saying, “Show me your friends and I’ll tell you who you are.” In the digital age, it may force the subtle change to, “Show me your friend list and I’d walk away with nothing.” The internet and social medias have impacted the world for an overall good, but with good things, other things can be lost. Our attention spans are much like the “shorts” or “stories” we watch for one. We need the summary of the story, not the stories in between. Those seem to take too long. Speed up to the clinking glasses, the walk on the beach, the shot of someone jumping into water, and an airplane taking off. Then repeat over and over as someone on the opposite end scrolls past and rewards the video with a heart, or at the very least, a view. The interaction becomes a boring transaction. In fact, the in-betweens of that vacation shown could be two people staring at their screens either editing their experiences or watching sliced up versions of someone else’s. More than the shrinking of attention spans has been the brutal inability to carry conversations with weight and substance. Like the disappearing digital stories that are live for only 24 hours, we simply forget in order to make way for the constant drip of information flowing day by day. Conversations used to be built over time, like one brick laid over the other; information on top of information, often carried by the other party’s curiosity to gain access to that knowledge. Then in turn, either in polite gesture or genuine interest, the two swap stories to create a sort of book between themselves. I have not had the privilege of such an interaction for a long time, and if I have, something important is missing.