Hi guys! Welcome to Episode 625 of the wildly successful lifestyle podcast! I’m glad you’re here. After doing this episode I kind of wish I was talking to you in person! You will understand once you listen. But at any rate thank you for being here.
This last week, I saw where a person online has created an app where they can create a video of a beautiful woman that looks like a real person who is talking smiling, influencing but in reality it’s an Indian guy sitting in his basement who is really behind the scenes. I’ve been feeling lately like I can’t trust anything I see online and that video nailed the coffin shut. What’s real when everything could be fake? I follow an account on X called autism capital, they post interesting things. This last week they posted something that hit home for me. I won’t do a good job of paraphrasing so I’ll read it quickly.
“The AI boom may end up accidentally liberating people from technology. When you can’t trust your eyes, your ears, your thoughts, when everything you experience online could be digitally false, when passwords, bank accounts, nothing is secure, you go offline. You only meet with others in real life. If robots exist you cut a body to see if it bleeds, you can show proof of humanity, you only trust those in your immediate circles, and before you know it, you’ve remembered the value of community. Essentially by poisoning the well of the digital, you may ultimately be free to be fully human.
Pretty spot on post if you ask me.
I am fairly certain if you get on social media you probably have had some of those same thoughts as me. I personally like X. At the moment it’s the only social media that I use other than Pinterest. I think that is still considered social media. But more and more I’ve noticed in having to question if every thing is real, it is losing a bit of its draw which I am here for. I don’t want to be tied to my phone. I want to live life, I don’t want to be on a never ending loop of needing my phone for my next fix. I want to have real live friends, not an anonymous person who may or may not be what they are presenting that they are. One of my words for the last several years has been authenticity and I’m craving that. Recently one of my best friends broke her leg and her arm in a fall so I’ve been trying to be there to help her whenever I can. One day in the middle of the afternoon on like a Tuesday I brought her some things she needed from the grocery and while I was there two of her other friends stopped by to check on her so here we all are on a Tuesday afternoon sitting in her living room, with actual live people laughing and telling stories and i kid you not, as I sat there, I thought this is real life, this is how it should be. Real community. Real people spending quality time with other real people. It felt really good. We need more of that.
We need less phone time and more in person authentic community. And look. We have all in a way forgotten a little bit of how to be social. How to be a community. I still blame the Covid authoritarians for making us scared of our own shadows let alone of someone else’s. Have we forgotten how to have dinner parties or social getups for no real reason other than it feels good to be around people we enjoy, real people.
My goal this year is more creating, less consuming. More in person socializing, less X. More real authentic experiences, less fake social media driven dopamine hits that ultimately have us feeling worse in the long run.
Technology is here. It’s staying. But guess what. So are we. And we were here first. And if we want to get a jump on a life beyond technology, we have to start doing it now and that’s a little uncomfortable, I know. Technology can allow us to never leave home. I know the grocery delivery from the touch of our phone is convenient but sometimes the grocery store is the only interaction people have with real humans! We need to get out, we need to have dinner parties, lunch outings, hiking retreats, social gathering for no reason other than it feels good. And yes it means we have to leave our homes. Our homes should be a respite from a long full day, not a prison, a prison might I add that is only locked from the inside, if you catch what I mean. Remember the quote I shared from the monk in episode 622. You’re not home because you’re tired, you’re tired because you’re home.
Technology can’t take our humanity unless we let it. So let’s just agree to not let it.
Share this with 3 people who you would love to see more socially. I love you guys, I’ll talk to you in a few days.
