The Future Will Be Pixelated, Probably

What are the implications on one's lived experience as online life is rife with meaning and possibilities?

- INDRAN PARAMASIVAM

I DIDN’T REALISE IT until someone else pointed it out: At the height of the Covid-19 lockdown, my dad levelled this question at me: “Why do you like watching videos of guys shouting at each other?”

He was referring to my conspicuous consumption of specific podcasts platformed on YouTube. These were either full-length—often hours-long sprawls—or clipped versions of the latter in video format, of people, mostly guys, talking to and/or at each other. To my dad, it didn’t matter who they were. He didn’t care for either Joe Rogan or Joe Budden. What mattered was that his son exhausted a significant number of the day’s hours watching grown men squabble online.

But what he didn’t know and what I didn’t bother to acknowledge to myself on a deeper level because it was a beyond-obvious fact at the time, was that I needed it. I needed to watch grown men argue about whether or not aliens exist, whether Kanye West is the greatest everything of all time, whether the John F. Kennedy assassination was a CIA hit, and so on. Starved for conversation and company during the era of forced social distancing, and chained to my bedroom, I found some form of both online. It was good enough – which, all things considered, was sufficient.

In the virtual expanse of the Internet, I very easily have some of my social and emotional needs met and, since then, I’ve come to reckon with the veritable life I’ve built there.

This, dear reader, is my story.

Seek And Ye Shall Find