I recently watched Citizenfour, and first off, if you’re thinking ‘you’re 8 years late to the party Ioana’ let me tell you being born in the Eastern bloc as one of the first post-communist generations, you grow up with stories of telephones having microphones in them and being told to lower your tone when saying compromising things because the neighbours might hear. When mobile phones became the norm, we assumed and accepted we’re being Big Brothered, a rare case of Romania being ahead of the rest of the world.

Anyway, the thing I found most relatable was in the beginning Snowden says “I feel the modern media has a big focus on personalities and the bigger the focus on that the more they’re going to use it as a distraction.” and I felt that tickle in the deepest pit of my heart.

I know everyone is big on how “1984 was not an instruction manual”, but I feel Huxley in his ‘A brave new world’ was just as, if not closer than Orwell was in his vision. If you haven’t read it, the brave new world described has a softer form of totalitarianism, where conformity is achieved through hypnotic persuasion. Bottle-grown babies are preordained a social class before birth based on the level of intelligence genetically engineered – managerial work for the highly gifted, servitude for the dim-witted. All programmed to love their designated purpose through brainwashing done while being educated which inspires in them maintaining the most important pillar of society: consuming. Everything is done in the name of Our Ford, the only god worth worshiping.

Culture in the brave new world consists out of going to the ‘feelies’ – activities which are a combination of videos and sensations the participants are stimulated to feel in accord to the images presented, with no real story or meaning behind. All books except on technology are banned, and nobody is allowed to ever be alone and ostracized in case they enjoy even the thought of it, because what could one ever do while being alone?

Illness, just as sadness have been eradicated, the first through gene engineering and the second through soma, a drug which is not only prescribed but mandatory, which has as effects a bliss like state but no adverse effects.

And so, going back to our present-day fabric of reality, it seems to me as if it was weaved by the threads of both Orwell and Huxley, giving us a perfect Brave New 1984.

Just to put into perspective the acknowledged dystopia that we live in, as I was growing up I was firmly told when using the internet I should not be using my real name, or engage in conversations with strangers, let alone give them any personal information. Two decades later, my phone asks for permission to use my camera for confirming my identity, so I can scroll through a meat-catalogue and choose which stranger I should meet later.

I’ve written before (and if you know me in real life, tut-tutted in a holier-than-thou attitude ;)) about the psychological repercussions of the internet, propaganda and the like, but to circle back to Snowden’s words, personalities are used as a distraction. Not only other personalities, but ours too.

At our very core we are social animals wired to react to content which includes other people. On a biological level, the presence of another person will incite a response, while on a psychological level, content which seems relatable will make us feel included, will make us feel as if other people feel the same. When you combine these two things, you get the feelies, you get reels or tiktoks made by people which are enacting relatable bits of anyone’s lives, which superficially fulfill our needs of not being alone.

But in truth, we are alone. Though mentally we are experiencing other people’s realities, it’s all lies, because what we are seeing is distorted. The things we post are curated versions of ourselves, they really are ‘stories’. Stories we tell ourselves and others. The plump lips, the vacations, all the fun, they’re just, to quote Mr. Robot “spamming commentaries of bullshit masquerading as insight, social media faking as intimacy.” And we did vote for this. With our presence, with our time, with our content. I’m voting for it right now by creating content, you’re voting for it right now by spending your time reading this, selling our privacy for illusory pacifiers.

And if it would stay on screen, it wouldn’t be so damaging, but it doesn’t.
Every bit of information we intersect with has a repercussion which we don’t feel. A drop of neurotransmitter here and a drop of neurotransmitter there eventually makes a river, we eventually find ourselves flooded by feelings of unworthiness when constantly faced by people who are better than us. And the flood turns biblical when those people are just the digitally improved version of ourselves, which does not look back at us when we look in the mirror.

And that’s just branch of the ramification tree: we’re depressed, we’re anxious, we have attention span deficits. But worry not, pills have been invented for each and every problem, because it’s easier to treat the symptom than the cause, Progress can chemically fix both the imbalance it has caused, and the imbalance you were born with, because if you have problems navigating the world, it’s not the world’s fault, it’s you. Even if ‘you’ is comprised out of several generations of people.