I don’t want to watch videos
posted
I join a session on resonite. it’s a gridspace–or maybe a small, quaint little hangout. my friends are in there. I like my friends. but I join–I wander, wander, eventually finding the critters–and see nothing but empty husks of models surrounding a flat video player. smack dab in the middle of a random room.
I leave, usually
I don’t need any auditory gaps to be filled. I don’t need to give my brain stimulation through empty Content. I don’t need every moment of my time in this digital space to be filled with noise
and I especially don’t want to watch a meme compilation.
at best, I can play along. on average, I turn the volume off. if I’m sufficiently annoyed or out of it, I will leave. I feel like shit when I do. I feel like I don’t fit. almost none of the time do I want to drop everything to watch a video in a social space. it’s almost always not something I’m interested in, for one. for two, if I’m in a social space, I usually want to be social, damnit
I don’t care about this 20 minute eccentrically edited video of some guy making a thing. I’d rather read a blog post about it. I don’t care about this hit new piece of tech that I won’t buy. it’s probably going to be discontinued in half a year and sends your data to 50 billion advertisers. I don’t care about this twitch streamer e-celeb that’s always loud and relies on the parasocial bond between themselves and a soulless chat. almost all of them I can’t stand, spare a small and select few
I don’t want to zombie out at a “try not to laugh” compilation where everything is stolen from 3 places anyway. feeling like shit the whole time usually means I’m not laughing
tell me about your day. tell me about your latest interest. tell me about any interest you have. what you’re working on. how’s life. what’s life. how was the weather today. I don’t know man. I’d rather share the silence than try and fill its blissful emptiness with artificial noise from a source that shouldn’t even be in the conversation.
the silence is social. we experience the silence together. we can envelop ourselves in its odd warmth.
it’s boring, but it’s a boring that leaves you content. silence is what true freedom is
I feel more lonely watching Content with others than sitting in silence with myself. I feel more together sitting and doing nothing with another critter than softening my brain with a recap of a movie everyone in the room has already watched. and if a video is less than 60 seconds and 9:16, the volume’s going to zero faster than what gravity could do.
I don’t have all the answers. I don’t know what to say myself a lot of the time. so I won’t expect other critters to force words out of their maws. but silence is more than enough
I just really, really don’t want to watch a video