Is how you spend your days really how you spend your life?
Mass media and day-in-the-life Tik Toks have spoiled the sweetness of the mundane and flawed.
We as a society are obsessed with what goes on in other people’s lives. When walking down the street and we see an ambulance driving by, we wonder, what happened? who got hurt? While weaving through grocery aisles we hear two women gossiping about how much Phil cheats on his wife, well does she know? Maybe Phil has a loveless marriage, we conclude.
The fact that ‘people watching’ and ‘eavesdropping’ is considered by many a completely normal and enjoyable way to pass time signals that we are intrinsically wired to desire insight into the happenings of anyone and everyone, longing to be the fly-on-the-wall with a front row view of how other people live their lives out of inspiration, boredom, and plain bitter jealousy.
Collectively we do a poor job at minding our p’s and q’s, which comes as no surprise since most forms of media milk dry the intimate details of others, a practice that has only gotten more common and further enabled by the internet.