It scares me on a deeply existential level. The digital creates distance emotionally and contextually, which has and will cause many types of damage going forward.

I sometimes wonder what would make a person upload themselves as cameos and it has to be a mixture of this with added ego and curiosity? After all, technology is thought manifested and we all daydream. This just extends that reach into mass consciousness.

The onus on the creator or person involved to surveil how their digital self is managed is like the hyperreal and the panopticon combined (and holds engagement). However, now they can also use plausible deniability by claiming a video to be AI generated if it shows them unfavourably.

I’ve been researching and writing about what I call the Ludopticon and I realise that many streams of thought from others have run parallel and it’s so cool to know others have been on this shared wavelength. It’s changed my perspective on what I’ve believed in the past for sure!

(Which also doesn’t help as they become increasingly connected and surveilled from the inside out and vice versa). I also think I’ve been labouring under the misconception that the body is there purely to service the mind and its functioning. I cried thinking that during the session for the 1st time

Because the mind exists in the past and future, the body acting as a tangible present; the more we hold space in the disembodied mind to the detriment of the body, the more anxious we can become. It’s definitely something I relate to. This happens as analogue spaces and activities become digitised

which leaves us with the loss of anchoring and grounding. Byung-Chul Han mentions this in Non Things where physically the fingertips interact with the screen, facilitating choice rather than a more embodied action of the hand. Of course as algorithms tighten their grip, this is also an illusion.

Social media platforms are perfect for this as we can’t know what is hidden from us, and those who know can’t share this out of fear of being cut off from source.