In the world we live in, everyone is desperately in search of meaning. Everyone wants to feel as if they are a part of something that’s larger than themselves, and this is why the internet has a big presence in our lives. It’s useful, in the sense that it can solve many problems (although we must wonder if their solutions don’t burden us more than the problems they’re solving), and yet we are seeing people commonly use the internet to not just solve problems, but also to entertain ourselves, find community, and get access to things that might not be local. As the years go on, the lines between the consumer and the business become blurrier and blurrier. Suddenly the corporations are tweeting out memes with the persona of an affable and hip zoomer, and the kids take to hiding under mystery, and adapt that to be its own form of a persona, as a reaction to the overstimulated, cloying, and persistent efforts of everyone wanting to be somebody. In a new turn that has been afforded us by the so-called democratization of the internet is that the people choose their own idols and their own heroes in an endless endeavor to define themselves. Kids who grow up in suburban households with a financial advisor as a dad and a music teacher as a mother are taken in by the promises of the algorithm, and of what appears to be special knowledge, in order to uproot themselves from their local life and apotheosize themselves into something greater. We must wonder—is this how a good life is won?
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