Poison Bubbles
Yesterday I was surprised to catch a YouTube video automatically playing content that was chosen by its data-collected algorithms. The video was outside my customary watching parameters, and though I wondered where this seed in the data came from, I realized how how easily media bubbles form. They start out as paths of curiosity but blow up into isolated worlds of self-affirming information. They bounce around the ether and damage the landscape of truth before they bump into reality and magically disappear. Legacy TV channels had fixed schedules, so in the days before satellites and fibre optics, there were not many channels to choose from. Anyone who wanted to watch the daily news, had to be in front of the set at the right time. Twenty-four-hour news channels put an end to that. Once the Internet began to entertain and connect people, media consumers have more choices of viewing and listening, but they tend to narrow their focus rather than broaden it. In doing so, they cut themselves off from new ideas that don't fit a narrative related to their usual input. They will skip over information they don't agree with, but by avoiding everything outside their personal comfort zone, they miss the horror and also the sublime. Rather than browsing the spectrum, they select subjects that don't challenge them, so remain fixed in their narrow point of view.
Living in a bubble is like being locked indoors. People adapted to this state during the pandemic and discovered it was possible. Some still live there. Bubbles, by their nature, are limiting. Without exploring the wide world and all that it has to offer, fearful people will choose the easy and safe options, ranging from A to B. Bubbles can protect and insulate, but they are delicate, fleeting structures. The realities of the physical world will eventually absorb the bubble. Some try to turn the membrane of their bubbles-worlds into defensive walls, believing the wall will protect them from the unwanted and feared integration into life. They close their eyes, plug their ears, and sing nonsense.
Bubbles form and coalesce into globular shapes because those shapes are at a lower energy state. Bubbles are spherical because that minimizes their surface area due to the tension of the liquid film holding air inside. Bubbles are liquid membranes filled with gas, while a liquid globule surrounded by gas is a drop. A cell membrane is like a the container for a drop, a reverse bubble, which functions as a protective coating that surrounds a liquid, which is in turn surrounded by other cells. In a living creature, the cells, like bubbles, are pulled into less than spherical shapes by the more robust organic structures they encounter.
There are bubbles in bread, cakes, cereals and chocolate, and liquids like beer, champagne, mineral water and soft drinks. Bubbles and droplets are essential structures of living things, but wherever they appear, they are subject to alteration by the medium that envelops them. Bubbles are not permanent, though evidence of their presence remains visible by the shape they have expanded into their matrix. These are like the bodies in Pompeii, buried and burned by Vesuvius' ash, that have been revealed by plaster casts of the hollows left by the smothered human shapes. Perhaps there is an ash or a jewel left in these cavities, but their organic contents have been consumed, leaving only the empty forms. Bubbles are hollow and usually contain a gas that is close to the density of their encompassing medium, but they can also harbour harmful or poisonous gases.
Bubbles are impermanent, mobile, evolving structures. It is better not to get trapped inside one. They are an unstable shield that can leave the hermit eternally frozen like a fly in amber. Maintaining a bubble's integrity against all onslaughts is a losing proposition. Bubbles are elastic, and if pushed too far by outside forces, their membranes will rupture, and the bubble will pop. A bubble is not a permanent home to find refuge from the unpleasant things in the world. These problems need to be confronted and fixed, without averting our eyes and thinking we can float away unscathed on the next friendly breeze.
