💔Missing Normality
Wayfinding: Conclusion > The Other Side of the Argument > Missing Normality
One of the biggest struggles for many theatre audiences was shifting their entire lives, including their theatre attendance, to their digital devices. the subconscious association between high stress and online theatre: ‘During the pandemic, that argument [against mediatisation] was renewed and intensified as the screens presenting live online theatre became doubly shrouded by the chastening knowledge of what had positioned it there – the state of fear of contagion and death – together with the reminder of the internet’s central and sometimes insidious role in guiding our understandings and responses to the virus …’. More people than ever became Extremely Online, a condition known to have . Pre-pandemic, this led to a movement called digital detox, and the concept has since been revived post-pandemic.
The idea of the digital detox has existed for over a decade now; according to Google Trends, the term began appearing around 2010, as social media and digital device use became so ubiquitous that the reactionary idea of a . Detoxing sometimes included leaving devices behind while on a vacation, sometimes involves deleting accounts on social media or similar services, and sometimes involves focusing on outdoor adventures or physical experiences. Digital detox as a pervasive concept peaked first in February 2015, then again post-pandemic in January 2024.
For practitioners and proponents of the digital detox, it was likely very stressful to suddenly and forcibly shift one’s entire life into an experience of the world that had been rejected before. , Rick Heath of Black Swan Theatre in Perth, Western Australia, was quoted saying: ‘At Black Swan, we feel quite strongly about that sense of assembly you get from gathering a group of people together – it's great to be able to do in online, but it's not what we do as theatre makers. It is always going to feel a bit like the B-version if you're not in the room together . . . and the streaming cost is very high’. This expresses both the intangible sentiment that something in the physical co-presence of theatre artists and audiences is too ephemeral to capture online, as well as that the practical needs of upskilling staff and purchasing equipment are unjustifiable expenses in a time when the foreseeable future’s income comes down to government support and donors’ goodwill. , Edith Wagner of Reunions Magazine is quoted saying: ‘There’s just far fewer hugs online, and that’s driving people back to seeing each other in person, even if they’re still apprehensive’. In the , results of the ‘2022 National Arts Participation Survey, which found that three in five Australians (60%) agree they miss the atmosphere of a live event/exhibition/experience when viewing online’; the same report adds: ‘Others stated that they attend live theatre specifically to be engaged in something other than looking at a screen’. During the period of social isolation in 2020 specifically, many people realised they missed variety when they suddenly attended entertainment and events predominantly through a screen with internet access.
Disapproval, dislike, and disgust with digital devices have a basis in evidence; more people were becoming aware of the addictive and exploitive natures of the programs they used. Max Fisher explores the history of these issues with social media specifically, . He writes: ‘Social media platforms surfaced whatever content their automated systems had concluded would maximize users’ activity online, thereby allowing the company to sell more ads’. Large technology companies must make money to keep running, and if they offer a product for free – like a social media site – then they must find a way to generate income from this tool, thus they sell their users’ data to advertising agencies. , ‘Social apps hijack a compulsion — a need to connect — that can be even more powerful than hunger or greed’. in Mediatised Dramaturgy: ‘Even though we believe that we have full agency over our online actions and the privacy of our shared information (e.g. when we sign a consent form), we are often barely informed about how our personal data is used by the wider neoliberal machinery’. We all know that platforms like Facebook and YouTube harvest personal data to sell to advertisers; what is our responsibility as theatre makers when we create digital productions in these spaces?
Since most outlets for digital theatre are rarely controlled by theatre makers or theatre companies, we must assume that we are feeding greedy technology corporations. a similar concern, writing that ‘… work that is made or delivered digitally must depend explicitly on the mediation of interfaces, platforms, networks, devices, and systems often colloquially understood to attenuate, distance, or even pollute'. The constant monetisation also means that sometimes, theatre makers’ platforms are pulled out from under them. Brendan Bradley discussed this as a problem for two theatre communities he worked in, OnBoardXR and FutureStages:
[Mozilla Hubs] are now trying to become a subscription product that is about upselling. They have absorbed and productized community features as now features of a platform, a capital-P platform. … that does then get away from the intentions and the branding and the spotlighting that we've done of Mozilla. … We were like, 'Hey, great, look! We figured this out, who wants to play with it?' And then we ended up in a situation where someone was trying to sell back a feature to us that we had made. Which was very weird.
In March 2024, Mozilla announced that they would shut down Hubs, likely with the intention of releasing a paid version for metaverse creation; Hubs’ popularity and much of the development of tools for the service were generated for free by curious creative users, like Bradley.
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