The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
The Collapse of Self-Worth in the Digital Age
Why are we letting algorithms rewrite the rules of art, work, and life?
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/20948249
Why are we letting algorithms rewrite the rules of art, work, and life?
I know it's not about me, but this definitelt cleared up why i run from people in my free time.
They always express how they think i do things, like i'm at work or something. While i do things for joy, i take a detour home on my roadbike because the speed i can propel myself at brings me joy and a bit of a thrill too. The scenery is also very enjoyable.
But then another roadcyclist shows up and tells me how i'm doing it all wrong, how speed isn't a good measurement of performance.
Fuck yo performance brother, stop. It ruins my fun.
Such a common thing in the SelfHosted communities on Reddit and here too. It's always train this or that or learn this and that this cert that job this goal that performance bruh if you're a computer nerd it's okay to do stuff with computers just embrace it.
*Nothing wrong with goals or practicality, but so many are clearly just reaching for noble justifications for what they find fun, which is capitalist christian work ethic brainrot of the highest order.
Fun isn’t allowed anymore. Every hobby has been DLC’d out the wazzu. Also efficiency is the only metric anymore. Not human frivolous things like this so called ‘fun’
For incredibly obvious example of "efficiency rules everything", check out the Old School Runescape community.
A ton of grown adults trying to recapture the childhood magic of one old ass MMO that practically anyone could play for free... by optimizing things down to the server update "tick".
Doing things the "fun" way is sin, and looking for help getting through particularly grindy sections is liable to get you directed to the most ridiculously overoptimized solution ever that requires an absurd amount of effort to save an hour.
"The best way to tackle [LOW LEVEL GRIND] is to use [REWARD FOR UNRELATED HIGH LEVEL GRIND]. We will not discuss alternatives."
Sometimes i wish i had the balls to just tell them off, but that usally takes a lot of being pestered with bullshit until i snap back.
I'm having similar thoughts lately. As if after one trauma (12 years ago, or a bit more, one girl told me to "go to my mom" and a few more things) I stopped taking full responsibility for my own existence and started relying on external criteria, like performance, for example. And taking that responsibility again feels as if reality is real again.
I've noticed personally just how different my mind works when I am constantly presented with data for my actions. Even though these random data points have no real affect on my life, I'm still drawn to having those numbers be bigger than before. From the votes I receive from a social media comment to the reactions from a meme posted in a discord server, all I want is more attention through a click of a button from someone else's screen.
I hate it. It feels like my value is placed into a number. For me, I prefer my value to come from how I treat other people. I feel a far greater sense of self when I am able to put my time and effort into helping other people. I get to learn the inner workings of someone else and teach them to empower themselves. It feels rewarding when later on those people I helped express their gratitute and trust in me. That is far more rewarding compared to the quick hit from any brain chemistry when looking at a bunch of data points or a bunch of money.
Unfortunately, I can't make money this way. Not in the way I want to learn, teach and empower other people. I'm terrified of going into a career that will destroy my innate desire to help others. I know it'll wreck me in the process. Again.
Capitalism destroys everything it touches by sucking all the life, creativity and humanity out of it until there's a empty shell left behind. An empty shell that looks like every other empty shell. All those empty shells can be counted, given a value and sold. Reducing us and the human experience to yet another data point.
I truly hope more people come to understand that these data points don't have to put us in a competitions with each other. That our value as people can come from places that don't have/need to be from a number value.
One day, our planet will die. One day the last historian will die and all that data and preserved knowledge will sit and decay. It's human knowledge and it's meaning has more value to humans than any other living creature on our planet.
Personally, I'd rather live a life where my actions are responsible for the wellbeing of myself, my community and the land under my feet. It doesn't matter to me anymore if my value can't be reduced to a number.
Same reason we allow rich walk over us and kill our planet, its easier to just not do anything about it. Its also hard to do anything when you dont know what to do and have nowhere to turn to for support. Sadly its group effort and price of not doing anything is hell.
"Given the chance, gamers will optimize out the fun" This is the same about real life when statistics apply to everything. This is why I decided to ignore any rule that anyone else would self impose or to others. You have to realize that the others are not living your life, you are. Who cares if you arent the best, the brightest, the wisest. Do what makes you happy. Be silly, be cringe, be angry, be sad. What matters is that you live a good life by your own standards. The world will dissapear when your conciousness will fade away, so why let numbers, humans, or ideas stand in your way from living the life you would have lived as a cave man, an artist, a farmer or whatever?
Comparaison is the thief of joy. So think less, and live more.
You can reason yourself into despair, or irrationally rise above it. What do you choose?
We are all data workers
Powerful and saddening. It does feel like, as an artist, everything revolves around how good others think you are. I try to go around it by only performing others people's work, but also then, you're dependent on those people wanting to work with you or not. Still dependent. Always dependent, as an artist, which is so so heavy.
The problem is though, how do you even call yourself an artist? What's art, and what's a doodle? Is it a degree? X amount of sales? Doing it under employment? So not indie? X hours of effort per work? X listeners on Spotify? Talent? Skill? How does one judge that? What criteria? How could one apply such criteria to oneself when we are so biased? When is someone a kid just putting blocks together in FL studio, and when is someone a musician? A composer? An artiste? Can I call myself an artist if my friends swear my songs are good? Am I going to be discovered after my death as a secret genius, or am I just churning out cacophanies that make sense to no one but myself, making me little more than a living argument that perhaps tools should be reserved for those who know how to use them, an ape armed with a musical shotgun?
Thinking about all this stuff just makes my silly empty head spin. I'm only a hobbyist, but I know an actual published playwright, theatre manager and hobbyist game dev who I greatly respect and admire as an artist and person once said "oh I'm not an artist though" as she was explaining game dev to me - a CS major, and it just obliterated something deep in my soul. girl, what then who even is.
Always Sunny gave a comforting answer in an episode once, it's when the right people say it is art, then it's art. As nonsensical as this answer is, it's at least an answer.
The always sunny explanation is better then most. Art is in the eye of the beholder. I think almost everything can be/is art, if you tried to create beauty or evoke emotion with design, it is art. No one can really call themselves an artist without sounding... Almost pompous? We are all artists.
You know, figuring out you're a girl does wonders for your self worth. Y'all should fuckin' try it sometime.
I'm glad you found that's the case, but that doesn't really have anything to do with this article.
Nah it did jack shit for me in that regard. Don't get me wrong, transitioning fixed my gender dysphoria, but that's nothing to do with self-worth.
If anything prior to transition I never fucking worried about this stuff, because I wasn't even really a person, I wasn't even afraid of dying because I wasn't really living in the first place. Most of the time I wanted to die throughout my teens so what I figured out to be gender dysphoria would just stop torturing me. Transitioning saved my life.
Now, I'm 10 years in. What a ride. Now I actually quite like my life, I like myself, both physically of course in that my body basically doesn't cause me any dysphoria at all anymore, a sentiment I find baffling really, and even just my character, I've had a tough life and a tough time transitioning, but I've come out so much stronger at the end of it.
But that's just the baseline. I'm a woman. There's like a fuckton of women in the world. Who am I really? What makes my life worth living? If anything - this is exacerbated by how hard I worked to even just have some peace. What is it all for, just to reduce suffering, or am I capable of more than merely that?