The brilliance of actor Jack Nicholson owning the iconic scenes in the legendary horror movie “The Shining” has led to the adoption of various phrases from the cinematic classic becoming part of vernacular and the zany fun of firing salvos of puns across the deck of a friend or colleague.
This cultural gravitation of shared language intertwined with the evolution and transformation of digital communication clearly exemplifies the “high risk, high reward” nature of utilitarian raw technology that would possibly have an underwhelming effect on Nicholson’s character Jack Torrance, especially in confronting his wife on the main stairway of the Overlook Hotel. While the organism of social media reaches new and disturbing heights in time measured in fractions of seconds, the gig economy dream of profiting from the inane is a study in humility and the voracious appetites of the intellectually challenged within all the generations accessing the behemoths of the social networks. The universal obsession with individuals filming and posting stupid human pet tricks remains disturbing and things are only getting worse in a nightmare involving the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel and a widespread audience indifferent to decency. (Jack would probably be exhaustively bored at the flood of banality relentlessly broadcast across the bandwidths)
The end-users of digital platforms are continually reforming themselves in the quest for financial prosperity, as the Facebook’s, X’s, and TikTok’s face addiction issues in fueling the insatiable desire to accomplish more with the least amount of effort. To remain relevant, purveyors of controversial content continue to morph into whatever the general consensus demands which ultimately invades the savage jungle of politics for the sake of personal gain at a cost. The ideal of work is no longer passe in the early stages of the Information Age, where internet schemes threaten a whole slew of recklessly adopted tax laws, and politicians salivate at the prospect of policy equivalent to waste.
The latest electronic craze involves adults, only in a legal sense, selling their soul to bait the click of the hook catering to the obliviousness of humanity.
As a herd of quasi-actors inhabits the ecosystem of social networks, circumstances change more than the boundaries of identity politics YouTube is welcoming anarchy from a content generating standpoint. The social media site has seen a perceptible decline in traffic numbers over recent years, as the term “after thought” may be just around the corner. The aforementioned women and men monetize ignorance in order to increase traffic on their personal and organization pixilated walls of maladies, which is as easy as taking a selfie and lacks any evidence of the whimsical.
In the fevered game of impressions for dollars so called “digital creators” are pawning pop culture ignorance in a pathetically forged campaign to reach the entire scope of demographics especially the older generations through heavy servings of nostalgia. In the newest electronic craze these “creators” are producing segments on their streaming channels and filming themselves critiquing and reacting to popular movies, songs, and television shows from the past with the schtick being that they have never actually seen or listened to a retro performance. Imagine a warped legion of modern personalities in the style of Siskel and Ebert offering constructive criticism on all aspects of pop culture media under false pretenses and featuring a maelstrom of f-bombs.
The current craze has all the believability of a Pennsylvania University swimmer slaughtering records posing as a female athlete and obliterating the competition. “Obliteration” is merely at the surface level of the contrived. The subsequent drivel of the postings on YouTube has gone viral and boosted by the naivety of the younger generations. (at this juncture Jack is beyond apathetic and mental violence is on the horizon)
The axiom of digital fads dictates that trends are eventually engulfed into the extensive ether of the digital realm, and with the 15-second attention span spiraling to soon break the 10-second barrier, the false critics may soon become obsolete and society can avoid a tectonic Jack Torrance meltdown fueled by unrelenting boredom. The complete annihilation of critical thinking skills can still be avoided.