As a child I used to create a fictional world to protect myself from the truth or reality. I deciphered that this process was embedded into our lives in many complex aspects while reading Hito Steyerl’s ‘Too Much World: Is the Internet Dead’.

‘“Cheekbones are airbrushed just as whole cities pretend to be YouTube CAD tutorials”’

The reality of things that we see on the internet are very different or even truly the opposite. ‘Beauty Gurus’ create airbrushed step by step tutorials for their viewers to achieve such unattainable results. And the viewers enjoy it, fund their next video, get them sponsorships and adverts, follow trends all by conspicuously consuming all that the beauty industry has to offer and create when truly all that they are really offering and creating is a lie. Cities are airbrushed when they are promoted in travel, experience, business advertisements everywhere. Viewers truly don’t know the reality behind things, or they choose to ignore it. In case of the latter, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs might give some insight. The need for the fulfilment of ego is much stronger than the need of self-transcendence.

We create a fantasyland as a form of escapism.

‘“It feels as vibrant as a newly multiplexed cinema in the nineties showing endless reruns of Star Wars Episode 1

Was the internet shot by a sniper in Syria,

A drone in Pakistan,

Or a tear gas grenade in Turkey?

Is it in a hospital in Port Said with a bullet in its head?

Did it commit suicide by jumping out the window of an Information Dominance Center? ‘”

Here I have embedded some links to the events referenced above from media, journals and news published on the internet in the same timeframe this essay was published. This reinforces the author’s statement, ‘“The internet is not dead, it is undead and everywhere.”’

But the question on my mind is if the internet is just an extension of us, and are we are just an extension of our emotions?