Thumbnail and Banner Photo By XR Today

Television. Radio. Cinema. Those were the only three options for entertainment at the beginning of this century. As someone born at the end of 2003, I can still recall childhood nights, somewhere between the cooling weather at the end of autumn and the early signs of a harsh winter of 2009, huddled in front of the television. I would eagerly flip through channels, waiting to see what movie is playing next, and making note of the programming schedule. Unfortunately, not everyone can say the same. Not everyone lived through the period in time when entertainment functioned through three sources according to a specific schedule.

Instead, we now live during a time when we are met with dozens of inventories for visual entertainment, from streaming platforms to social media and music apps. So much so that it would take great strength and resilience to avoid getting lost within the vast storm that is our current entertainment environment. While some might consider the present state of entertainment a great accomplishment and advancement by humankind, several questions remain unanswered regarding the effects this plethora of platforms has on our everyday lives and the cognitive state of humanity.

The Hyperreality of Film and TV

Watching a movie used to be an escape from reality. It was a chance for people to take a break from the madness of their day and ignore their troubles for an hour or two. Tuning into a television show once granted an opportunity to enjoy a knowingly absurd reality portrayed through the characters' lives as they pursue their daily tasks and struggles. Consider the 1953 classic, “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes,” in which Marilyn Monroe depicts a glamorous young showgirl who must prove to her future father-in-law that she is marrying for love, not money. The film overflows with theatrical musical numbers, extravagant costumes and movie sets, and evident dramaticised performances from the cast. What is so different about this film, and many others from the last couple of decades, is that there is a clear understanding of the nature of the performances in the movie. The characters behave in exaggerated manners and engage in somewhat unbelievable behaviour that leaves no room for viewers to assume what happens in the movie is in any way depicting reality.

When compared to modern movies and TV shows, like “After” (2019) and “No Hard Feelings'' (2023), there is a noticeable shift in this perception. Recent movies increasingly portray the world we live in today so precisely and mimically that a viewer may find it hard to differentiate the movie’s plot from the reality of the world we live in, especially when that reality is itself portrayed on TV. Apart from the obvious exceptions that involve science-fiction, magical, or overly exaggerated action elements, modern movies and television shows depict our world pretty realistically. People have gone so far as to demand real-world events be turned into movies or TV shows; they have been conditioned to expect the events of the world they inhabit to instantaneously become entertainment. This begs the question of what we, as a civilisation, are absorbing when the rise of hyperrealistic movies and TV shows is taking over the media scene.

The Social Media Insurgence

We are no strangers to the wonders of social media. Starting in the late 1990s and spanning the next three decades, social networking sites have revolutionised the way we communicate and connect with each other. They have made something as seemingly impossible as global connection a reality by gifting us networks through which we can communicate with someone halfway across the world. From the first social media platform, SixDegrees.com, to the creation of Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, the presence of social media in our everyday lives has only been increasing. In 2023, it was estimated that approximately 4.9 billion people across the world are social media users, and the average person spends around 145 minutes a day on social media. However, it seems to me that social media has become more of a promise of unlimited entertainment than a communication medium.

Content Creator Culture

A content creator is someone who creates entertaining or educational material that is then released through a certain medium like social media platforms, the internet, live events, radio, cinema, television, and even printed materials. What we presently see online represents a state in which “content creator” individuals make videos, post vlogs, and share photos that people engage with as a form of entertainment. We spend hours a day on social media platforms, whether it may be Instagram, Facebook, or video-sharing platforms like Youtube and TikTok in which we swipe through endless feeds of influencers’ Italian Summer Holiday or content creators’ Moving In Vlogs. This is not to say that the content being produced is insignificant or faulty. Instead, when considering this material, I am inclined to ponder the extent to which this created content is being perceived as entertainment as opposed to a means of human connection. In a way, it seems like social media has become the new Reality TV: follow real people as they take on the bustling world around them and encounter exaggerated drama and happenings.

Not only do we see a select number of individuals taking advantage of the system and delivering entertaining content to viewers, but we also see viewers believing that they are capable of the same level of recognition by merely assigning themselves a “director,” “actor,” or “videographer” role. This very idea is evident in “cancel culture:” We, the people on the internet, have gained such a high level of entitlement and involvement with the media environment that we decide when and how another human being is no longer welcome within our inhibited world of entertainment, the “metaverse.” Social media users have become indulged in the idealised version of the lifestyle and turn every little event happening around them into a document-worthy moment. We now have people walking up to others with a camera, asking questions, and seeking noteworthy performances from passersby that would make it onto their platform and entertain viewers. Reality has become a form of entertainment, and entertainment has become a form of reality: Watching the documented reality of other people’s lives is a means for entertainment, and we take what we see online as an indicator of a reality we wish to inhabit. Do social media and video platform users understand the difference between what they view online and the actual world around them? Or has it all become blurred into one large maelstrom of what they see online and the life they actually live?

TikTok: The Literal Sound of Time Passing Us By

The creators of Tiktok, whether knowingly or unknowingly, labelled their company with great irony. TikTok has become increasingly popular in recent years, especially with the pandemic’s restrictive boundaries and limited access to the outside world. But what strikes me as most odd is the fact that people have acquired a taste for mindless videos that span a handful of seconds, let alone a few minutes. Tik-tok-tik-tok-tik-tok-tik-tok. That’s the sound of time passing us by while we spend precious moments of our lives swiping up to the next TikTok video, and the next, and the next.

I am all for social media and video sharing platforms when they add to the human cognition, educate, inform, inspire, humour. But I personally cannot get on board with entertainment that is abused and used for hours at a time. The videos we see on TikTok are so fabricated that even the one portraying “real-life,” like street interviews, are nitpicked and edited into exactly what the user wants you to see. Most people still only share the glammed up versions of their lives, convincing us that their life is perfect when it is not. As viewers, we fall victim to believing in the possibility of perfection and feel incompetent when we cannot reach that ideal life. People who unexpectedly go viral are met with overnight fame, but also with the expectation that they must consistently live and present themselves as living in the way that got them noticed in the first place, even when it is not necessarily their constant way of life. Some TikTok users forget they are watching real people with real lives and real feelings. Instead, they expect and demand to see specific versions of these individuals for their own entertainment, oblivious to the consequences of the fabricated reality.

Why Should We Even Differentiate Between Entertainment and Reality?

We have been pulled into an endless cycle of exploration focused on the blending mediums of entertainment and reality, never quite sure which is which or which way is out.

There should be a strict boundary between what is reality and what is entertainment. However, the truth of the matter is that we are living in a world where that is not necessarily the case. While some people might embrace this change and support a state of life in which we blur the lines between supposed entertainment and the reality we live in, I believe otherwise, and here’s why. In an article for The Atlantic, Megan Garber describes a metaverse in which people are able to fully immerse themselves in their entertainment to the extent that they can live within it. Instead of entertainment being something you can carefully and meticulously select, it would become something that we ultimately inhabit. In other words, the illusions being passed off as reality in our modern world become our stomping grounds. Garber says “each invitation to be entertained reinforces an impulse: to seek diversion whenever possible, to avoid tedium at all costs.” If we are turning to our entertainment regularly and frequently, then are we living within our entertainment? Does our entertainment become our reality? Or, better yet, has it already become our reality?

We have become so accustomed to the heightened nature of our entertainment that it is nearly impossible to settle for our dull reality. This accustomation has convinced us that we can and should seek out the same level of materiality within our daily lives, that we can expect our reality to play out as it does in entertainment.

But here’s the thing. Entertainment is not only available through our screens: it can be found in interactions with other people, in new hobbies, in community events. If we continue to rely solely on the media for our entertainment, we will end up translating the reality online to the society around us, one that is reduced to the tropes established online, lacking substance and individuality.

Final Words

We are losing ourselves in media entertainment, led by a rapid descent into triviality.

Although we live in a time when we can share so much of ourselves with so many people, we have never been so alone. We have been reduced to our online personalities and appearances, making few friends in reality and then wondering why others seem happier online. News flash: they’re not any happier than the next lonely person hiding behind their screens and their vast entertainment platforms, hoping for a way to inhabit those realities, and so forth, until the whole world is wishing they were somebody else, somewhere else, doing something else, with someone else: wishing they were living inside the entertainment they see.

It’s time to take a break from our entertainment media, put our devices aside, walk outside, and smell the flowers as they experience the changing seasons. Admire the beauty of nature, of having meaningful conversations with the people around us. Notice the stark difference between what we see online and what exists right in front of us.

The Blurring Line Between Entertainment and Reality