Isn't it strange how you can feel totally connected to someone even though you are physically isolated and alone?

 

When I spend more time on the internet than IRL,

does that mean I exist more on the web than IRL?

 

Some days I don't even speak a word.

I type

 and I click

I don't shower

I don't shave

I don't get dressed

I don't go outside

I don't notice the sun rise or set

 

 and it's almost like I forget I exist physically

 

I just click around

 all day

 all night

 

Autoplay gently puts me to sleep with endless loops of fail videos and forgotten vlogs from 2013

and the whizzing laptop fans keeps me warm at night

 

I'm connected

I'm alone

I'm in a bubble

 I'm the bubble boy

 the bubble boy in a bubble with 3,2b internet users

I'm alone

But I'm not lonely

 

I don't speak

 but I'm not mute

Sometimes I can share the most intimate details of my life with strangers online.

 And it's easy because they don't know me

 

But other times, I wish they DID know me

 Or that people I actually know IRL would know my internet life

 

My browser history can probably tell you more about me than my best friend.

Like, how can you say you really know someone

 if more than half of their experience is shaped by places and communities

  you didn't even know existed.

I don't know.

It sounds kinda depressing,

 but then,

  it's also not.

 

When I wake up, I find that autoplay ultimately always takes me to a Justin Bieber song

 and it's got 2,078,379,616 views,

 and I think about those 2,078,379,616 people

  and how we share the experience of this music video

  how we're all staring at a screen

  and on the screen it looks exactly the same for all of us

 and it makes me feel happy

 because I feel connected to everyone who also watched the video.

 

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TL;DR

My work explores human subjectivity on the web. I am interested in how we form social and emotional connections based on collectively experienced media content in the online community.

 

Some time ago, the internet began spawning media-babies like me, and we've come to experience and transform the world and ourselves through images. We were brought up in an image-saturated world that is neither completely real, nor completely fake. Rather, it is a sphere in which the "real" and the "virtual" seamlessly fold onto another, and attempts at distinguishing between the two are futile and obsolete.

 

The internet taught us how to inhabit and navigate these image worlds.

 

But now, how do we reconcile our image worlds with the real world;

our virtual selves with the physical ones?