T-TH 3:00-4:30 PM Juntilla, David V.

BFA Cinema 1

CONNECTED BUT ALONE

A line from the TED talk that really stuck with me was “We are lonely, but we are afraid of
intimacy”, because I think this line truly describes the kind of people we are today, the kind of people
technology has turned us in to, and the kind of people we will possibly continue to be in the near future.

This line really stuck with me because I could not agree more with Sherry Turkle, the speaker,
because the people today are in fact very lonely, and we are often searching for someone to be able to
communicate with, yet we are somehow still scared of getting too close to those people. A good way to
put it is that people want to express their feelings loud and clear, they want to yell into a void of silence
until their throats are sore, but they are also afraid that someone form the void might answer back. People
really want to vibe with a random person, yet they don’t want to share too much with that stranger for
the fear that the stranger not liking what they might hear. The generation that was born with the internet
was and still is one of the most connected, educated, and most vocal about issues, and yet ironically, we
are at the same time one of the most isolated, ignorant, and indifferent generation. Isolated because we
have been exposed to so many cultures and customs that we become very conscious of what we say and
the signals we send, to the point where we have lost the confidence and skill of starting a conversation
with a total stranger on the internet. Ignorant because we may be exposed to the different customs and
cultures around the world, but we only seem to indulge in a certain culture when it is a well-known and
popular culture, to the point where we seem to erase the memory of our own cultures to make room for
the information of foreign cultures, the best example of this would be the Korean and Japanese cultures,
people around the world can be quite knowledgeable about these two Asian countries because of how
much social media coverage they get, specifically in KPOP and Anime. And worst of all, this generation an
be indifferent. Yes, this generation is very Vocal, we can see numerous examples of how vocal this
generation can be when we look at the many controversies that have been highlighted, and that is the big
problem, this generation is Selectively Vocal. Here’s one example I can give: When the Notre Dame started
burning it got instant media coverage, and Notre Dame went top trending on twitter, yet it took a while
before people were aware of the Amazon fire that had been going on for several days.

What does all of this have to do with the line “We are lonely, but we are afraid of intimacy”? It is
because we are such an Intelligent life form, and a very educated generation, and yet we fail to show little
to any at all signs of common sense, we have come to rely on our technology when it comes to staying
connected, yet we fail to communicate with our fellow human beings due to this reliance, we talk yet we
don’t make any sense, and we hear yet we don’t listen.