5
SHREYA VATSA
You are home, sipping on a cup of coffee that burns your tongue as you subconsciously sit down for yet another Netflix binge-a thon. You’re ready to live vicariously through the fictitious characters on-screen by watching a familiar sitcom or a new standup routine. Whether you switch to Black Mirror to see your life reflected onto a tethered screen or isolate yourself into a personal void, you know that time is running out and that you seem to be showing symptoms of withdrawal as soon as you turn it off. Although, you still don’t know if it’s the coffee or the inseparable screen that aggravates your anxiety. You procrastinate a little more and realize that this is it. This is your life: irrevocably tethered to and commanded by the screen. This obsession with an augmented version of reality and you burrowing into a cocoon of solipsism—that is it. You wait for your work and daily chores to be over to go back to your cocoon. To be right back and reclaim your natural, technological itch.
This is the dilemma of ‘Generation Z.’ With the technological advancement that humans continue to achieve, we seem to be rushing to the path of obsolescence rather than creativity. Even though technology has reformed science, medicine, quantum computing, and more, we have become obsessed with its use for social media. We have latched onto the idea of augmented reality instead of acknowledging the existence and livelihood of ourselves. Imagine how far one has to veer from the goal of saving the actual world to saving your virtual identity. Maybe it’s this delusion of our virtual selves that seems to make people addicted as it makes them believe the hate, conspiracies, and lies that spread faster than truth and non-artificial tweets. Maybe, it’s other people in this machine that seem to judge your life in the blink of an eye, based on your screen-selves. And then you decide (or rather you react). Do you mould yourself into becoming an android version of you? Or do you confront the crude and insatiably capitalist business model that manipulates you, that grips you by its talons and claims to serve you while demanding your gaze incessantly—that defines your needs for you?