The age of vicarious-living
When I was 4 years old, I’d spend hours kneeling at our front window… just staring outside.
A family with 6 kids moved in across the street and their parents were always drunk.
So naturally, these kids were getting into all kinds of trouble all of the time — falling out of trees, breaking things, walking barefoot on glass. And my mom, being the standup lady she was, wouldn’t let me go outside unsupervised.
So most of the time, I’d just sit there… and watch.
It was super entertaining.
But I’m not gonna lie, I kinda always wished I was out there getting into trouble with them.
I’ve been thinking about this memory a lot lately.
Because it feels like a metaphor for the times.
Everyone is talking these days about the unhealthy aspects of “parasocial relationships.” The one-way relationships that we develop with athletes, celebrities, artists, and other random influencers (usually through the internet).
Today: many young people (or maybe many humans in general?) have more “parasocial relationships” with strangers they don’t know than real relationships with people that they do know.
It’s no surprise then that loneliness is one of the biggest crises of our time.
We don’t actually know the people we are spending the most time with (though we think we do).
And therefore, we are missing out on most of the things — i.e. one of these people acknowledging our existence — that would make us feel like we actually belong in this world.
But, as it turns out, this is partially by design. Some part of us thinks people on the internet are cooler and way easier to deal with than our hometown friends. We also don’t have to put in any effort or risk in to getting to know them. Which is low key nice sometimes.
David Foster Wallace wrote about this phenomenon all the way back in the 90s, when TV was the predominant medium for developing “parasocial relationships” —
“... television looks to be an absolute godsend for a human subspecies that loves to watch people but hates to be watched itself. For the television screen affords access only one-way…
We can see Them; They can’t see Us. We can relax, unobserved, as we ogle.
I happen to believe this is why television also appeals so much to lonely people…
For lonely people are usually lonely not because of hideous deformity or odor or obnoxiousness—in fact there exist today support- and social groups for persons with precisely these attributes.
Lonely people tend, rather, to be lonely because they decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans. They are allergic to people. People affect them too strongly…”
If he thought that was a “godsend,” what the fuck would he think of the year 2024?
We now live in a world of infinite content.
We have “access” to more people and more lifestyles than ever before.
We can “relax, unobserved” forever if we wanted to.
And let’s get real, some part of us does want to.
Some part of us is totally okay with letting other people do the living, and hiding away in the corner.
Some part of us does want to “decline to bear the psychic costs of being around other humans.”
Which include: being vulnerable, looking like an idiot, admitting we don’t actually know everything, experiencing silence, realizing that we are all in fact a bit awkward and imperfect.
But the more I think about it, the more I realize — this whole situation extends far beyond just the loneliness / belonging part. And this “parasocial relationships” bit.
I think we are — in the process of — outsourcing our entire lives to strangers on the internet.
We are entering into what I’m calling: “The Age of Vicarious Living.” An age characterized by our limitless ability to “try on” different lives, experiences, ideas, hobbies, and perspectives without ever having to leave your couch.
This is beautiful if it’s a launchpad for trying new things and building real relationships in analog reality.
It’s horrible when it becomes an endless black hole of trying things on without ever activating anything in the real world.
It’s even worse when you’ve confused yourself into thinking you know something just because you’ve watched hours of someone else doing it.
We all know: a truly fulfilling life is filled with a bunch of bullshit as well as a bunch of awesome shit.
And it’s so much easier to watch the highlight reel of someone else doing awesome shit, than to have to deal with any of that bullshit.
It’s much easier to watch a ripped fitness creator than to get to the gym for the first time in 6 months.
It’s much easier to listen to your 17th podcast about meditation than to actually sit down on the cushion.
It’s much easier to watch a reel of crazy skydives than save the money and spend the time to get your license.
It’s much easier to talk about creating content than try to dig in and craft genuinely meaningful story.
Watching someone else do something you want to do gives you a little bit of a buzz. As if it’s happening to you.
The buzz isn’t quite as good if you were actually doing it, but you don’t have to deal with any of the bullshit either. So the duller feeling? It seems like a worthwhile tradeoff.
Until it isn’t.
We get into trouble when the consumption is “just enough” to scratch the itch, but also keeps you itchy.
It’s a drug.
Every drug on the face of the earth — including my favorite one, caffeine — has drawbacks.
You pay a price for trying to circumvent the truth of how you actually feel.
In our case, with living vicariously through people we see on a screen, it’s creating the biggest mental health crisis we have seen in the history of humanity.
The equation in my mind is simple:
Reality is full of friction.
Watching content is completely frictionless.
Turns out friction — in relationships, hobbies, careers, etc. — is what makes these things meaningful to us.
And what is meaningful makes us feel alive.
And like life is worth continuing.
Carl Jung warns us of “unearned wisdom.” I think we’re also working with — unearned dopamine, unearned friendships, unearned entertainment… all the way up to an unearned life.
If you don’t know where your center is, and don’t know what you love, it’s hard to use the social internet as a tool.
It’s very easy to be used by it.
To outsource your entire life, and everything that might make it meaningful, to hours spent watching other people’s highlight reels.
Like any addiction, it’d be hard to keep up scrolling forever if you felt there was something better to spend your time on.
And that’s the key.
In his book Digital Minimalism, Cal Newport lays out the need for “active leisure.” Just like anything — when you create a gap in your schedule by giving up a bad habit, you have to introduce a new one.
Or else, you’re more likely to go back to the old one.
Social media is beautiful when it’s used for inspiration to go do real things in the world. When you listen to a podcast about the Olympics or watch a cooking creator, and then go for a run or make your family a meal after.
That’s the key to this whole thing.
Not to ditch the digital world, but to use it as a launch pad.
To stop confusing consumption with living.
To put in the effort and risk to do things in the real world.
To stop listening to your mom all the time.
And get in some damn trouble.