Interactive Entertainment
2026-03-20
Sometimes in between writing these entries, a certain set of thoughts will come about. I'll think through the ideas and say to myself, "That would make a good Cogito entry," but then I'll end up sitting on the thought for a few days because I inevitably end up writing about something else. Eventually, I'll look back on the thought and gather that it's not worth writing about, and discard it altogether. There's something to be said about my thought curation process; a lot of it involves going through memories or conversations that I have with people and forming some kind of thesis on it. It's as if I've put myself in this sort of corner where I have to write about something in order to fully "finish it" as a thought. I don't think that's entirely true, especially considering the sheer volume of things that I think about.
On my mind recently: there were a few Discord servers I was in. They were 4chan-adjacent servers. The people in them would get there through invites posted on the site, and they always tended to attract people of a certain chronically online milieu. These days, this describes most people. However, what I've found is that in those particular communities, there's a certain ethos that dictates interaction as entertainment. Most people weren't there to be themselves or find any kind of meaningful connection; they were there so they could dissociate from their lives and engage in a sort of postmodern theater. Everyone was aware of their performance but didn't want to confront it as such. Those people weren't interested in sharing interests or ideas. All they wanted to do was exploit the eccentricities of others.
I had been engaging in those communities for years. Pretty much ever since I left my last job around early 2024, I got pulled into this strange and precarious world. People wanted to be seen but not known. At first, my interest in joining these communities was a blend of curiosity and a desire for connection. I'd been browsing sites like 4chan and other imageboards for over a decade, and when I joined those communities, I felt a need to find like-minded people in a similar position. Many in those communities were unemployed or disabled, but many others were regular working-class people. As I ingratiated myself, I found there was a certain sad reality to many of them I found fascinating, albeit strange.
The sadness came from seeing just how chronically online these people were. They would be on calls throughout the entire day, constantly switching between sending messages and scrolling through social media. For many, it felt as if there wasn't a single moment they weren't connected to some sort of device. Because of this, I could see some of the most intimate aspects of their lives being consumed for entertainment. I'd see people get into domestic disputes, do drugs, and even have interactions with the police. It was something that, despite making me feel uncomfortable, I kept coming back to. Discord, like all the other social tech platforms, stays in business by keeping people glued to their application for as long as possible. Despite my own issues with social media addiction and quitting many of the major platforms, I found myself just as entrenched.
My thinking was that as long as it wasn't an infinite feed of algorithm-generated content, I was safe. I felt that because I could have conversations with people, there was a certain value there that platforms like Xitter or Instagram couldn't give me. In some aspects, I think that's fair. I really did get into some good and meaningful conversations with people. Despite the weird parasocial nature, I did receive some genuinely fruitful insights from a cast of unlikely people. Those moments kept me there for as long as they did, but I've found that the signal-to-noise ratio couldn't justify those increasingly scant good moments. I wanted to make friends, but those platforms don't optimize for it.
I was in a small handful of these servers, and earlier this morning I made the decision to leave all of them so I could get some time back. I don't want to use people for entertainment. Even if I have that good intention, that's inevitably what happens. It's the way the wave moves. What's more important is that I clear this cache so I can achieve a more refined thought curation process. In those communities, the only thoughts I got were social media slop discourse and weirdly intimate psychoanalyses of people I can't really ever know. I hope to fill that gap with something more substantive, but when the main way to live is online, is that really where I want to keep pulling from?
I've tried thinking of what else there could be. There are options, of course. Getting out in the world, doing real activities with real people—all of that sounds great, but something makes me feel like it wouldn't be any better.
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