asakiyume: (miroku)
asakiyume ([personal profile] asakiyume) wrote2025-03-14 10:20 am

A spectator society

A friend and I were talking asynchronously the other day**, and she put forward this interesting idea:
A thought: we've become a spectator society, where people often watch sports or plays rather than participating themselves. Are we also becoming a society where many people watch social relationships (on TV, the internet, etc.) rather than participating?

What do people think? More than an agree or disagree, what questions does the question raise for you, or what roads does it take your thoughts down?

For me, it got me thinking about the difference between something being effortful and something being miserable. Building something strong takes effort, and effort, by definition, involves work, which isn't always fun. But that's by no means the same as misery. You can rightly want to avoid misery, but I think you're likely to be disappointed in life if you try to avoid effort. ---But that's just one tangent. What does the question raise for you?

**"talking asynchronously" is my new way of saying "exchanging letters."
lokifan: black Converse against a black background (Default)

[personal profile] lokifan 2025-03-16 02:37 pm (UTC)(link)
OMG, the moving-in-2020 thing was so rough - your poor daughter! Two of my best friends moved out of London in December 2019, and were really like "we'll come down all the time! please come and visit us!" because they were worried they'd leave London and stop seeing all their friends. And of course that did happen, and it felt like it! Even though if they'd been in London we wouldn't have seen them any more than we did. (None of us had cars and were all way too covid-cautious, for various reasons, to get the public transport needed to see each other outside even during the less-intense lockdowns where it was allowed.)