RE: Shared Experience
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To be fair, there's back and forth on this. Maybe we were stopped at the same light, listening to the same song, but ours could've been wildly different experiences anyhow. As you yourself point out.
I think there's give and take in a way, because the Internet does expose us to more opportunity of shared experience in some way. There's the chance that I'm here listening to a Florence song, dancing in my living room, and there's someone in Illinois doing the exact same thing. We have the same YouTube page open in our browser. Something that would not have been possible thirty years ago.
we can never truly share an experience with another, even if we eat from the same plate, sit on the same couch, ride in the same plane, or listen to the same song.
And maybe that's lonely, but maybe it's fantastic, also, the vast scope of human experience. It's a sad conclusion, perhaps, but it's the facts. It's not like we had the option of such shared experiences and missed out on them, but that we're separate beings and can only share in this mutual living on Earth to a certain extent. And perhaps that's miraculous in its own way. That coming from completely opposite directions, backgrounds, and continuing along vastly different storylines, you and I can in this moment still share an appreciation for or feeling of freedom at the same thing.
Loved the train of thought here. :)
As the possibility of experiences approaches large numbers, the world begins to become lonelier, and we have less to relate to one another with.
The likelihood also does drop, mathematically. That's a shame. I love the discord feature from covid that let's you watch things together. A few shared experiences there.
The other thing i couldnt articulate well with words was that... Well this post totally gave me a new idea for an art project - looking at people's gazes in the crowd ar a concert and tracking them all with different, grouped colours based what they're looking at.
That's what I did with the header image. I had a lot of fun observing a moment of shared experience and identifying how it diverged, but was still, more or less, the same experience.
It's a good idea, though to be honest, I fear these "together apart" types of thing, you know? I don't think it's the same thing. Obviously, things are different. It can be rally useful if you're an ocean away, but I fear people use such things purely out of convenience, to watch together from two streets apart and just not get off the couch, you know? Which seems to me to reduce shared experiences.
I loved the header, and that sounds like a really unique idea! I can't wait to hear about the results :) Have fun with it.
Sometimes it is just enough to be in the same room, staring at the same screen with another :)