The Internet as the Unconscious


One of the most interesting ways that the internet has changed day-to-day human society is the following experience: let's say you interact with a specific person a lot on social media. Then you see them in "real" life. You see them, they see you, you see them see you, they see you seeing them. But you have very little interaction, at most a "hey".

It's almost like we have become 2 (or more) separate people: our online identity, and our irl identity. The online versions of ourselves are friends, but our meatspace doppelgangers are at best acquaintances, awkwardly shuffling past each other.

To me, this experience is just one example of a larger phenomenon: the internet is surrounded by a complex psychological scaffolding of disavowals. You "know" (people, subcultures, information) online, but you *pretend not to know* elsewhere. You pretend to be "innocent," so to speak.

The internet has become the (quasi-)permanent repository of disavowed knowledge. We have turned ourselves inside out.

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