We’re all just waiting for that single original thought. Perhaps, in a lifetime, we’ll be lucky to get one. For some, time passes by and the ghost of a thought flits by. For others, more blessed than the average person, maybe two single original thoughts will take hold, more; how does it feel to be God’s favourite? Sorry, backtracking — I don’t mean to discount the work poured into procuring one. 

Then there are some who have the innate, perhaps cruel perhaps not, ability to spot someone else’s single original thought and capitalize upon it. Marshall McLuhan writes in Understanding Media (1964), that “[i]n the electronic age we wear all mankind as our skin.” The global age, the golden age of technology!! and globalization!! and everything at our fingertips all at once!! yet the distance and loneliness looms overhead, threatening to consume every shred of individuality we once had. 

“Once we have surrendered our senses and nervous systems to the private manipulation of those who would try to benefit by taking a lease on our eyes and ears and nerves, we don’t really have any rights left. Leasing our eyes and ears and nerves to commercial interests is like handing over the common speech to a private corporation, or like giving the earth’s atmosphere to a company as a monopoly.” 

– McLuhan in Understanding Media (1964)

What are we, if not walking, talking billboards? Free advertisement, a byproduct of the last TikTok we watched, a watered down version of the latest trend, or merely spouting what we overhead on the Sky Train. The powers that be, a fist-like hold on our projected thoughts. Maybe that’s where our single original thoughts have disappeared, buried in a graveyard created by those with the power to manipulate and control the information we are fed, and by extension, with the power to control the information we put out into the world. 

Kazuo Ishiguro, Japanese-British novelist and screenwriter, once said, and I quote, that “[he] think[s] [he] hate[s] the AI lovers because deep down [he] suspect[s] they may be right. That what they claim is true. That science will prove beyond doubt there’s nothing so unique about us, nothing there our modern tools can’t excavate, copy, transfer.” This, ladies and gentlemen, is the crux of my exhaustion, the demon behind my doubts. Thanks, Kazuo Ishiguro. 

Loneliness is the worst disease and with the growing use of AI, everyone is burrowing further into their holes, comfortable in their complacency. There is no longer a need to seek physical interaction or exercise our comprehension skills if everything is accessible to us on those tiny screens that simultaneously alienate and unite us. And as a(n) (aspiring) (soon to be, hopefully) writer, loneliness isn’t a far cry. Add to the mix the constant need to prove yourself, in a world increasingly hell-bent on losing every ounce of creativity and independent thinking. If mankind is my skin, and my skin is therefore mankind’s, who am I? 

Flip the coin. Who are we now? A community of collaborators, more deeply aware of our surroundings than ever before, connected by a thread that deconstructs the narrow-minded box we would have been brought up in otherwise. The argument of the sequential versus the simultaneous arises (shoutout to ENGL 384), as we shift from a sequential understanding to a simultaneous culture in this electric age, with everything just one tap, one call, one button away. The death of print gives way to the birth of heightened connectivity, previously unseen.

Why, then, is the loneliness epidemic on the rise? 

Funnily enough, but not shockingly, based on consensuses on Reddit and TikTok, third person writing is slowly going out of style. New generation readers are unable to connect to third person POV, gravitating towards first or second person writing, a direct, and rather sad, result of social media content primarily being in one of the aforementioned tenses. The dearth of emotional connect is a huge indicator of generations losing touch with the real world, one that exists outside of the screen.

Destruction and creation coexist: one cannot take place without the other. One medium informs another. The slow, still-very-much-in-progress, death of the oral tradition gave way to libraries; the creation of the Internet meant the popularity and need of libraries and print form as we knew it to be, no longer exists at the same level. After all, what’s the point in paying writers to create quizzes when anyone can be a creator on Buzzfeed these days? On one hand, the variety is larger than ever seen before; however, the value of writers is rapidly diminished. 

A few days ago, Accenture broke the news that they were laying off 11,000 employees, to pave the path for their AI reskilling strategy, as a part of a proposed $865 million plan. An army of robots: what happens to the rest? We created this army; we poured what we know into it and now we’re crying over the outcome. Is there a middle ground to be found? We are the medium: we produced the medium that is AI. Yet this extension of ourselves threatens to topple the world as we know it.

After all, what are we but hypocrites? We’re more than happy to exploit this tool as long as it is beneficial while we whine about how no more jobs are available to us. We love creating countless Studio Ghibli images even if it exponentially increases the rate of global warming and then we cry about climate change. Where is our single original thought if we’re busy scapegoating, constantly looking for the next easy way out? 

We’re more concerned about our digital image and online presence than we are about what we’re truly doing. And thus we arrive at the billboard phenomenon. When we’re all transformed into advertisements, children of social media and birthed by tabloids; when the most interesting thing about us is what we’re wearing or the reel we watched. When single original thoughts are overshadowed by Hailey Bieber’s new phone case, or who slighted who on public television, or how blueberry nails are the next big thing !! how are you not aware? The drive to remain relevant threatens to bury us. Talk to me when you’ve found a way to dig yourself out of the grave. Until then, I’ll be here, criticizing everything possible because ultimately, I’m no better than everyone else. 

Until my single original thought arrives, I’ll be a hypocrite too, comfortable hiding behind my screen, my main source of news being Instagram and Reddit. Until my single original thought arrives, I’ll be a hater.