on the compulsion to search for novel ideas

In this age where passive media consumption has become part of our unconscious behavior, there is indeed a compulsion to consuming "new" ideas. In this sense, we can think of "ideas" as the very atomic part of our digital environment. The online algorithm has relentlessly conditioned our brains to scroll through our For You page, replacing intentionality with false sense of serendipity. This passiveness, the atomicity of this phenomena, where this behavior has pervaded through our unconscious minds. The way that this behavior is invisible to the point that we can only notice it once it starts happening to us is such an insidious characteristic of the human mind.

Gossiping can be considered as one of the manifestations of human curiosity. It is the desire to know new information about social relations in the community where you belong. There is the social aspect of information. The who, the what, the when, the where, the how, and yes, mirroring the fundamental format of journalism. This is not to say that news and gossip are interchangeably the same. Of course, we come to the problem of a credible source as their main differentiator. New information in both of these cases only has the requirement of context. The story is king.

What I want to ponder upon is the operative word that I used earlier, which is the "atomicity" of the data that is being desired in this age of abundant information. The algorithm feeds us with a randomized yet tailored sets of data that we may or may not be interested in. Most of the time, our interest event does not matter because sooner or later, the potential virality of the content will push it into your own For You page. It is only a question of when.

I think of this atomicity in terms of data itself: on its own and isolated from any context. Knowing becomes an activity where it is in itself the desire. It seems as if we have managed to create a desire without an object. In its own sense, opening up your social media feed is a compulsion to just see what is out there. It has become the equivalent of looking outside the window to pass time to just watch people, see what it's like outside at 4pm in the afternoon, trying to check what people are doing, or eavesdropping on conversations to check what is today's hot topic. Oftentimes we are met with information that is actually not necessarily for us to know. It may be out of our circle of interests or something we would not even care about in our own tiny bubbles but since a lot of people are talking about it, there is a compulsion to know, to understand, and to share our thoughts about it, even if what we know is possibly an information that is five times removed from the source and has gone through a lot of revisions and reinterpretations.

I am still trying to understand because I am trying to move myself away from this online habit that I also formed. I am only now realizing its effects and possible implications now that I am trying to make the time I spend every day more meaningful and intentional. Oftentimes, I find myself in this cycle. In order to break the silence in my brain, I will cycle through Twitter and Instagram just to get a sense of witnessing "new" things. Sure, this is also most likely about the dopamine hits but what is new to me is that even if we have had a lot of talks about "dopamine detox" (which is in itself also based on a misunderstanding of neurological science), I begin to frame it as something that hinders me from developing my own ideas. Take this piece as an example, which is written because I had to intentionally close social media and write this observation instead. I had to make the conscious decision to stop my desire to passively consume seemingly new information. Because in the end of the day, I actually do not care about what people think about today. It also feels like a compulsion to divert my attention from an ounce of introspection. It feels like a coping mechanism to distract myself from the stress that is brewing inside of me and avoid confronting it in myself. It becomes a type of avoidance that only promotes a compounding interest of misalignment with myself. This is why I said that it hinders me from developing my own ideas. Because there are already ideas in my head that may be bad and rotting, but only because I haven't looked at them for so long because I am busy postponing and putting off organizing my own thoughts by looking at new things on the internet. It is easier and more satisfying to find the desire to look at shiny things than organizing my messed up thoughts.

This one felt like freeing some space I didn't know I had inside my own brain.