In 2011, sociologist Sherry Turkle published Alone Together, a pioneering study of the explosive growth at the time on pc desktops and especially the new cell phone of virtual environments like MMO multiplayer video games, MySpace, and Second Life and their potentially deleterious effects on human social interaction and relationships.

bite of the apple
in a corporate logo
how did we not see

Turkle identified on these new platforms an emerging “sense of place” where people in real world isolation were able to interact and build relationships as strangers behind avatars – virtual 3D personas very easy to name, author, filter, photograph, spoof, design, revise, fictionalize, anonymize, keep, delete and fruitfully multiply.

i remember us
driven to find each other
these days not so much

Six billion active smartphones cover the planet today providing opportunities to author and canonize unlimited liminal nominal selves to explore, game, reach, teach, create, earn learn, buy, sell, lie, cheat, steal, love, betray, fight, fuck, and form attachments of variable honesty and constancy without ever leaving home.

thrall of narcissus
black mirrors eating the souls
of those who don’t see