Written in 1931 and published a year later, the visionary and insightful author Aldous Huxley brought his remarkable cautionary tale to the world: Brave New World. Set in a reality in which individuals are genetically engineered, conditioned, and put into their designated caste system. The inhabitants of this world are meant to deeply involve themselves with pleasure; latching on to the “next big thing” the world controllers might give to them, and are taught to push away things such as literature and religion.
Huxley feared that we wouldn’t be forced into submission, but rather guided directly into our golden cages by a system that is designed for its population to love their oppression and the tools used that ultimately sets the culture back. Turning into a populace whose concerns lie in consumption, balancing and maintaining the social order, and pushing away feelings of discontent by the use of soma.
Soma in the acclaimed novel is a drug used by the inhabitants. A drug that is a visual stimulus that suppresses deep emotions and gives the user a sense of relaxation, relief, and a sense of euphoria. Soma, especially in high doses, can be deadly. In the fictional book some people died taking high amounts. In the non fictional sense however, it can be quite deadly in other ways.
Social media ever since its birth in the early 2000s has become a massive mass communication network that has turned our world into, as McLuhan said, “a global village.” In a weird way everyone does belong to everyone. It’s made the globe smaller and it’s allowed us to present ourselves to our peers and family. It’s created ways for people and businesses to advertise, mobilize, and promote themselves. Drastically, social media has been a network that has fought for users’ most valuable thing: time. As companies have realized this, they have now created platforms that are solely created to entice the user to come back.
With the help of algorithms, content is curated with highly visually stimulated videos and images that reinforce the participants to come back while simultaneously making it difficult for them to fully separate meaningful time away. Presented here in our time is social media being created as a means of ambient sedation by its creators.
We are spinning into a culture that doesn’t enjoy small moments of pause in our days. For example, in the elevator, a few hours before bed, during a traffic stop, or even in line at the grocery store. Additionally, as a collective culture we have been conditioned to constantly be on the move, to constantly go—constantly scroll without any real conscious consideration of if the moment even requires us to pull out our phones to inevitably scroll.
It’s in my perspective that social media has largely become a form of soma. A form of a drug that has massively gone under the radar as normalized. A form of a drug that has rendered humans to engulf themselves behind bright screens for long periods of time. A form of a drug that has been a bandaid for many people. A form of a drug that has perpetuated escapism, suppression, euphoria, while rendering and bending the means of truth.
Social media is exactly the kind of drug that our world controllers are using to a large success that ultimately distracts and distorts its populace.
Over a series of four more essays, I will discuss this topic deeper and confront my overarching question—when (social) media becomes a form of soma, what happens to thought, agency, and meaning in our culture?
