We have unlimited yummy food options. Everything is at your fingertips. There’s an abundance TV channels, movies, shows, new sources, and really hyper realistic video games. You can strap yourself into an apple Vision Pro, and operate a computer that is glossed over your eyes. We’re living in the age of abundance. Now what?
The goal to produce
Not productivity for productivity sake, but as an antidote to the consumerist culture and chaos that we currently live in. This means, when I wake up in the morning, I appreciate meditating on what thoughts or dreams I have, and write them down on my iPad or my notes app. I go for walks in nature and like to make a podcast or some sort of video to record my candid thoughts and just speak freely. Wielding a camera with me, I can make photographs along my way through the city and capture moments of everyday life. Making this website blog has been the greatest blessing as it provides me with a space to publish my own thoughts, photos, videos, and anything in between. Maybe most people reach for their phone first thing in the morning and start consuming? The antidote is to use it to start producing.
Concerts, bars, alcohol, and travel
How to keep the masses entertained? Just give them a nice concert with popular music, a bar, drugs, and alcohol. Have them in a trance on the floor as they dance, intoxicated, medicated, seeking pleasure from external means. Watch as the phones rise from the crowd, and thousands of people simultaneously share their point of view to social media apps. Do people go to concerts just to share the fact that they went to concerts? Similarly to traveling, do people travel places simply to post a photograph that they travel to the place? You could argue this to be a valid concern, considering the amount of people that make photographs of themselves in the same locations all throughout the world. It’s a sort of social contagion that plague peoples minds to think that they have to go out there and do things because other people do these things. Can you find entertainment without a TV, phone, bar, or concert?
The problem with social media
The problem with platforms like Instagram, and even YouTube, are the distractions. Everything on those platforms are merely distraction, from the advertisements to the mindnumbing “content.” Just treat everything on Instagram and YouTube as McDonald’s food. It’s essentially like eating McDonald’s and gives you diabetes. It’s not good for you or your soul. Anytime you go to grab your phone and engage with the social media application, just think that you’re going to do heroin or something. Maybe that’ll help you stop? Just delete your Instagram…
Alarms and notifications
When I consider an alarm, I think of the industrial revolution and its implementation in factories throughout the United States. The alarm goes off, the workers go to toil. We’ve become accustomed to the sound of the alarm through schools, both public and private education from an early age. At school, the alarm goes off, and you must report to class, sit down, and do your little task. When the bell rings, you get up, you move, and you go to the next room. You sit down, shut up, and repeat. Nowadays, the majority of people can’t get sleep without depending on an alarm to wake them up in the morning… I find this to be concerning for physiology and health. Not to mention, the constant ringing of the phone, and the alertness we have to go and grab the device with immediacy, without thinking of the social implications. Why not just keep the phone at home? Put it on do not disturb or airplane mode when you’re out and about or spending time with others. If you have that itch or urge to reach for your phone at any time the alarm sounds, are you truly free or a slave? Just think of the factories and the workers controlled by the bell every time you respond to the sound of an alarm.
Nobody cares for an audience
Let’s completely immerse ourselves in the production of work. If you want to have feedback or make your photos visible to the world, just publish them on your website and have them available under your (first name)(last name).com. Otherwise, just send the photo to a friend or family member directly. These illusions that exist on your screen, the numbers, the analytics, it’s all irrelevant. Nobody cares. Disable it all, the analytics, the comments, etc. Delete your email app and keep your phone in airplane mode. Can you survive?
Just think, would you rather have one of 300 Spartan Photographers follow your work or 1 million helots? I’d say there’s most likely only around 300 photographers that are making work in the world that is worth knowing about currently.
This is your call to disconnect, stop consuming, and just produce! Become one of the 300.