la trahison des images

Via Boing Boing, we are introduced to a pacifying, surrogate social network called Binky that fulfils every compunction, range of motions that one has come to expect from such a platform and delivers the satisfaction of being so engaged and focused on one’s device—except that the application is a meaningless one and the “content” streaming by that one can re-bink or otherwise endorse or scold (it doesn’t matter) is randomly generated before being cycled off into oblivion.
Communication and sharing is important but it’s not necessary to telegraph one’s fidgety compulsion to one’s future selves, perhaps, as indiscriminately as those we feel obligated to do for those in between times. Comment is encouraged but punching keys—deliberately or not—returns auto-complete gibberish for as long as one cares to type. What do you think? Two decades after Bill Gates declared that content was king, we have to wonder what it’s to signal when content becomes wholly optional and perhaps even too taxing sometimes. Meaning can be burdensome, obliviously, and our habits are surreal—ceci n’est pas une pipe.