You notice this whole "loneliness epidemic" thing? Online content providers bring it up at regular intervals. I find it convincing, but I've yet to be convinced of any of the possible solutions that get mentioned. Vague notions of "community" and "connection" get floated with utmost earnestness despite the crushingly obvious irony that online social media is algorithmically optimized to sow division, extremism, and conflict all for the eyeballs and the clicks.
What you need to do, if you're serious, is to monetize presence. Like, if you want to hang out with me you gotta pay up, 'cause my existence isn't free, y'know. These clothes? These calories keeping me functional? This college degree, and these library fines that power all this interesting convo I'm outputting-it all costs money. Therefore, I should be able to charge you-to mail you a fucking for real bill-if we interact in some kind of a social way.
In addition to dead tree mailings, I also propose implanting elaborate wifi-enabled sensor arrays in people's bodies that are authorized to debit and credit bank accounts during social interactions. Value is given, value is taken, and sometimes you give more than you take, other times you take more than you give. Using this new technology of In The Meats Cybernetic Monetized Social Exchange-ITMCMSE or ItemComps-we can finally, actually account for our value as social beings. If I give some stunning life advice that makes you change your life for the better, then I get a big payday. If you just yammer on about some show on Netflix, that's a more modest reward. If I start quoting Bible verses out of context to perform bogus righteousness then I will merely be compensated for calories burned. However, if I end up doing all the heavy lifting during conversation at some protracted social function, then I get Big Money outta your bank.
Now, if you're thinking, "Gee, this system seems primed for hacking, abuse, manipulation, and speculation," then I say to you . . . welcome to the Same Shit on a Different Day. We already live in the world made by hacking, abuse, manipulation, and speculation. All I'm proposing is the integration into our bodies and minds of an interpersonal version of the capitalist greed that powers all of the other systems and norms that define, structure, and give purpose and value to our existence.
That's all I'm proposing.
Drop the pretense that somehow magically our lives are not defined at all times and all instances by money, and cast off the delusion that our "connections" to our fellow beings are miraculously beyond the power of Cash American.
That's all I'm asking for here.
Acknowledgement of the reality by which we all live and have lived and will continue to live for the duration.
Personally, I think it's a light ask-a question to which we already have an answer, we just lack the resolve to modify our bodies-our lives-so as to begin to operate in accordance with the answer.
Hey, follow-through is tough, right?
It surely is.
