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I've spent my Christmas break reading. I'm in one of those ruts where I keep sucking in information, but can't quite see a way to make it all stick together... it’s all been like powdery snow… but I have been reading... so that’s something, right? Right?!

Here's what I've finished reading:

Remainder by Tom McCarthy (brilliant!)

The System of Objects by Jean Baudrillard (again)

Zeros and Ones by Sadie Plant (again)

Currently reading:

Memoirs and Misinformation by Jim Carrey (I'm finding it tricky to get into. Had to re-start it a couple times... but I am *going* to read it.)

Cultish by Amanda Montell (Meh. Nothing new or interesting, if you already know about cults, and it's written in a style that annoys the shit out of me. Still ploughing through it for some reason. May just give up.)

Wasting Time on The Internet by Kenneth Goldsmith (Only just started it. I can't remember why I got it though...)

The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky (again) Just because it’s been a while…

Waiting to read:

Coma by Pierre Guyotat Actually, this list is ridiculously long... I have so many books that I've either not started or started and stopped, but will get back to one day when it finally 'clicks'.

.....

I saw something on Twitter by Dave Hewitt the other day that blew my mind.

It made me think about how online we are in this feedback loop, we condense our life into a trite tweet or a 'pretty' picture while constantly searching for 'likes' and 'friends' and 'followers'. If we post about #Red and it gets more interaction than if we post about #Blue, we'll end up posting more about #Red, narrowing ourselves down, removing the colour, the variance and the nuance.

We start to just dip into life rather than live it fully. We devote less time in our real life looking at #Pink #Cyan #Orange #Violet etc in order to find content to fill our #Red posts. Always chasing the likes...

Soon, if we're 'lucky', we become 'The Red Person' and we befriend other Red People. Pretty soon there's no way out for us. We feel like we need to keep this whole #Red thing going because if we aren’t a Red Person then Who Are We Now? If we suddenly want to post about #Cyan, all the Red People will get angry.

'What?! Do you hate Red now??!'

'No, I don't hate Red... I just like Cyan, too...?'

'You can't like Cyan AND Red!!!!!!'

And so we just keep posting about Red so that we feel like something resembling a person. Keep chasing those likes as if it’ll mean something on your deathbed.

In fact, we have become like an MP3 with a low bit rate, living 'lossy' 'compressed' lives, missing out on a huge amount, but trying to give the impression that we are living a full life. If you really pay attention though, you aren't. You know you aren’t.

And I thought of this self portrait I did... and it started to all feel… sticky.

My Apophenic Haze

Lossy Compression