In a world governed by digital illusions, we’re not just spectators—we’re prisoners of the platforms. It’s time to rediscover autonomy and reconnect with reality.

Suppose we were to bring Hans Christian Andersen from nineteenth-century Denmark to contemporary North America. He’d be puzzled after seeing how much of his story The Emperor’s New Clothes holds. How collective illusions can distort reality is a matter of wonder.

In the tale, the emperor is fooled into believing he is wearing invisible clothes. Of course, the emperor doesn’t see beyond his nose and ignores the risks posed by groupthink and pure illusion, fueled by social chattery and sycophant adulation; his confirmation bias is all that matters. He is special, and the whole world turns around him.

Reading such a story to children and adults alike is an excellent way to gain some healthy distance from the commentary around political violence and explore beyond the pure zeitgeist to see why this is happening.

When everybody influences, nobody does

Consider a modern scene: parents picking up their kids from kindergarten, watching toddlers crave attention. That same need for validation now extends into adulthood, where social media influencers—celebrated attention-seekers—command massive audiences. Some of those left out become passive consumers, victims of platforms monetizing their insecurities.

We have it wrong: it’s not about acquiring a better social media diet; it’s about understanding that our current way of tapping into reality from our screens doesn’t depict a nuanced world but an invented land tailored to our hopes and fears. Falling into the delusion that we somehow control or affect reality more than we do is one of the epidemics of our time.

One of the issues with our refined social media diet is that we may think we have figured out it all, especially adults hitting middle age, a cohort especially vulnerable to loneliness, alienation, and despair.

We may think that all we have to do is substitute, say, highly polarized content for alternatives that bring nuances and different points of view and foster critical thinking instead of patronizing, lecturing us with a sense of moral superiority and self-righteousness.

It’s tempting to believe that we could easily counteract this risk by substituting superficial affiliations, just as we would do when we pick one brand of pasta or toothpaste over another. There’s a market for goods and ideas, and we decide. It’s our choice, we think to ourselves, and we can get it right.

It’s not that easy.

The necessary discomfort of living in reality

Today, many don’t feel like facing the discomfort of living in a society with different opinions; the next step for them is substituting human interactions with a low-cost, low-risk, high-satisfaction digital version —say, binge-listening to those extended podcast interviews in which the format reminds us more of two buddies talking at the bar than a more traditional journalistic format.

Many people may think that listening to two —or three-hour-long recorded conversations between two people their age gives them the same edge they used to obtain with real friendships, avoiding the drawbacks of cultivating and maintaining friendships in the real world (which are time-consuming and demand more attention and engagement). The power of manosphere influencers is stark, yet their “heterodox” thinking is suspiciously alike. To be independent thinkers, they certainly share a whole stack of similar opinions and cluster around the same places and status symbols.

Thinking that digital personalities are our confidants is a false equivalence, and digital buddies are not the real thing: two celebrities or so-called influencers talking among themselves aren’t our “friends,” nor do they care about who we are, our hopes, fears, or challenges. We are, at best, a part of their “engaged” audience and little else.

Genuine conviviality, or our ability to actively reach out to others and celebrate existence in one way or another, is marginal nowadays; ask around, and most people will say they are just “too busy.” But friends can come together occasionally to help each other, to give their advice, and get the point of view of others in exchange, to teach something informally or learn from somebody, to mentor or be mentored. Or, sometimes, to say hello, celebrate our fallibility, and put things in perspective.

After all, we aren’t the center of the world, even if our digital media consumption makes us believe so (or especially because it’s in their interest to make us think we are in charge).

Screen dissatisfaction

Those lucky enough to know how to set things in perspective could rarely fall for too long in the mirage of feeling they are very important, or crucial, to fix the world the way it needs to be (according to them). Unfortunately, studies and our own observations will make us realize that the tools we’ve built in the last decades weren’t conceived in a vacuum, hence the alienation tendencies of postmodernity.

It’s unsurprising that male adults fall prey to conspiracies and acts of radicalization coming out of the contemporary bargain of ditching conviviality (actual relations, with their advantages and inconveniences) for the conspiratorial rabbit hole “online activism.” Instead of confronting the world or getting help, some well-intentioned people fill the void and loneliness they feel with whichever self-aggrandizing mission they think they have discovered.

The current climate of political polarization has many causes, some of which can be traced to big trends, from the decline of traditional institutions to a profound transformation of work and lifestyles, prompting people to spend more time on things that aren’t fulfilling (commuting longer while listening to polarized ideas instead of, say, learning a new skill or being with others) at a time when the difference between high earners and the rest is bigger than any other time in modernity.

It also takes longer to pay for education as costs skyrocket; it’s become more difficult to afford rent, let alone to buy a house almost anywhere. Not long ago, people used to leave Seattle or Los Angeles to settle in more affordable areas around the Rockies like Bozeman, Montana, but now median house prices in Bozeman (or, as some locals call it, “Boz Angeles”) are higher than in Seattle. In parallel, we’ve created a pocket supercomputer designed so we can ask “magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest one of all.”

None of this should provide any excuse for people affected by contemporary malaises such as depression, mental health, or addiction (phenomena that often go together) to, say, become what experts call “lone wolves,” or attackers who believe they are saving the world with their actions. Ryan Routh, suspected of plotting the second attempt to assassinate Donald Trump in a few weeks, is the last disturbing iteration of this trend.

What’s the deal with this pattern?

It’s troubling to realize how many of these characters have an extensive social media footprint and self-aggrandizing writings in which they describe their delusional position as makers or breakers of entire societies and civilizations. Ted Kaczynski, capable individual who could have channeled his ability to learn in much more effective ways (if his actual goal was to counter the most disturbing trends of our society as a whole), wrote an articulate—if very delusional—manifesto, Routh had written a messianic book.

A profile on him by the New York Times describes a pattern we’ve seen before:

“Mr. Routh has been a serial crusader for causes large and small dating back to at least 1996, when he campaigned against graffiti in Greensboro, N.C., where he lived for decades.”

“In other social media posts, he tagged world leaders and celebrities like Elton John and Elon Musk, often providing his phone number and email as if expecting a response.”

Suspect in Apparent Trump Assassination Plot Crusaded for Many Causes, The New York Times, September 16, 2024

Also, not surprisingly:

“Mr. Routh’s social media posts suggest that he was a Trump supporter in 2016 but had turned against him by 2020. He voted in North Carolina’s Democratic primary this year, records show.”

Suspect in Apparent Trump Assassination Plot Crusaded for Many Causes, The New York Times, September 16, 2024

His trajectory diametrically opposes that of David DePape, a Canadian-born who identified with progressive politics as a Bay Area resident and, as he lost contact with friends and relations and became self-secluded, he found solace in far-right conspiracy theories, bringing him to try to kidnap Nancy Pelosi at her San Francisco home and, not finding her there, attacking her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer. They somehow ended in the same place. Ryan Routh is 58, while David DePape is 43. The story of their radicalization should be analyzed.

Expert in national security Tom Nichols wrote about the phenomenon of radicalization among lone men:

“Some years ago, I got a call from an analyst at the National Counterterrorism Center. After yet another gruesome mass shooting (this time, it was Dylann Roof’s attack on a Bible-study group at a Black church in Charleston, South Carolina, that killed nine and wounded one), I had written an article about the young men who perpetrate such crimes. I suggested that an overview of these killers showed them, in general, to be young losers who failed to mature, and whose lives revolved around various grievances, insecurities, and heroic fantasies. I called them “Lost Boys” as a nod to their arrested adolescence.”

The Narcissism of the Angry Young Men, Tom Nichols, The Atlantic, January 29, 2023

How about very desperate middle-aged men with mental instability and no meaningful social liaisons? Does this reflection apply to them as well?

The importance of real-life connections and mentoring

All that said, it’s important to acknowledge that Donald Trump has been giving a pass to second-amendment maximalists, actively contributing to the current climate of political polarization. More and more people perceive him as a caricature of a reality TV mogul who has morphed into a Marvel villain as if it were conceived by a Homer Simpson’s nightmare (or, in today’s parlance, a disturbing archetype out of a generative AI hallucination). That said, he’s still slightly ahead in recent polls. It would be paradoxical to see how one of the main provocateurs of our times becomes the victim—and possibly takes political advantage—of the turmoil he spurred.

Like Hans Christian Andersen’s The Emperor’s New Clothes story, we live in a time of little critical thinking and autonomy. As if by entering the digital era, we had convened to ditch the good-old institutional dependency to throw ourselves in one marked by false digital prophets and snake oil sellers curated by algorithms.

In other news—somehow related news, nevertheless—we learned that Instagram introduced new settings and features to try to entice teenagers to use the platform in a more constructive (read: in a less harmful and self-bashing) way. Following the changes, accounts of users younger than 18 will be made private by default in the coming weeks, so only followers approved by the account will see their posts.

Meta is trying to establish a truce with concerned parents, addressing concerns such as inappropriate contact and content, as well as screen time. Though, as others were quick to highlight, the new policies will have little impact on many teenagers, since Instagram has not set up age verification.

As much as it’s essential to talk about the impact of our digital diet on teenagers, we shouldn’t forget how gullible and prone to the same excesses adults are, especially those facing loneliness, a lack of real-life social connections, and mental challenges. Teenagers aren’t the only ones seeing themselves in the false mirror of social media and facing the rigors of the “hedonic treadmill”: they are pools of instant gratification, but also of comparison, as popular platforms encourage people to compare their lives with the curated highlights of others.

Tools for conviviality

According to the social comparison theory in psychology, we perceive our worth based on how we think we stack up compared to others. The market of influencers encourages people to take stands, no matter how unhinged, as long as it’s engaging and can be monetized by all parts of the transaction but the viewer.

One way to stay out of the hedonic treadmill and the diet of polarization some people are fed is to explore the healing power of true autonomy by becoming self-aware of how the attention market works. The only way we can be in charge is by acknowledging that influencers don’t talk to us nor are concerned about our well-being. Only we can cultivate this self-awareness.

Byung-Chul Han, a German-Korean philosopher, echoes this sentiment. He argues that the constant digital visibility we crave undermines our autonomy. The pressure to conform to hyperpartisan views and influencer-driven trends leaves little room for critical thinking or self-reflection.

Is there such a thing as “digital self-sufficiency”? Nobody can be sure: many people would get interested in the topic, pasting the keywords “digital self-sufficiency” in a search engine or social network, then exploring what algorithms feed to them—and confounding such a reductionistic approximation for “reality.” And we aren’t controlling which content will explain the topic to us.

We were told that the personal computer, the Internet, and the smartphone were tools of individual enlightenment and emancipation. At least, more and more people are becoming wary of such assumptions. The Austrian-born Christian anarchist and philosopher Ivan Illich put it this way in his 1973 book Tools for Conviviality, right before the irruption of personal computing (paradoxically, the book influenced the birth of personal computers, as it’s a book about man’s relation to tools):

“People need new tools to work with rather than new tools that work for them.”

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973), p. 10

The burden of constantly comparing with others

When everything out there mutates into influencer culture, a way to promote self-inquiry, critical thinking, and a bit of healthy skepticism would be to question the real value of the information that makes us feel engaged (and even more, the information seeking to make us feel outraged and antagonistic by demonizing others). Not only teenagers but adults would avoid feelings of inadequacy and “fear of missing out” on things (FOMO) by acknowledging they are constantly comparing themselves to others.

Ivan Illich advocated for creating better tools to help people flourish—and not exploiting their insecurities and dopamine dependency:

“In a consumer society there are inevitably two kinds of slaves: the prisoners of addiction and the prisoners of envy.”

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973), Ch. 3

In a world in transformation with ailing traditional institutions and new ones struggling to be born, aberrations can get a chance in the spotlight (a quote by Antonio Gramsci on these lines may come to mind to some). Ivan Illich thought that the modern world has to regain a “multiple balance” of “mutually reinforcing stresses, each distorting the balance of life in a different direction.”

Among the many broken balances was the loss of a work-life equilibrium and a lack of quality relations, as people worked harder and longer (or felt guilty when they didn’t). With no balance between means and ends, without a reason to create a meaningful life, people would fall for cults and crusades that could fill the metaphysical void they were feeling—at least temporarily.

The simplest truths

According to Illich, as the world transforms ends into means and everything is staged as a technical battle and the ultimate challenge—how to save the world, how to live forever, how to crush the opponent—we have forgotten to question ends:

“The overgrowth of tools threatens persons in ways which are profoundly new, though they are also analogous to traditional forms of nuisance and tort. These threats are of a new kind, because their perpetrators and victims are the same people: both operators and clients of inexorably destructive tools. Though some people may cash in on the game at first, ultimately all lose everything they have.”

(…)

“The transformation of learning into education paralyzes man’s poetic ability, his power to endow the world with his personal meaning. Man will wither away just as much if he is deprived of nature, of his own work, or of his deep need to learn what he wants and not what others have planned that he should learn. The overdetermination of the physical environment renders it hostile. Radical monopoly makes people prisoners of welfare. Men overwhelmed by commodities are rendered impotent and in their rage either kill or die. The corruption of the balance of learning makes people into puppets of their tools.”

Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality (1973), Ch. 3

The paradox of modern America is why, if the modern world is so good, is there such tension and discontent, such a struggle to find any real meaning to life? Just as the child in The Emperor’s New Clothes finally breaks the spell by pointing out the emperor’s nakedness, today’s movement to find meaning and conviviality can expose the hollow promises of digital influencers propelling consumerism and their most obscure versions.

Sometimes, the simplest truths can shatter even the most elaborate illusions.