NARCISSISM AND SOCIALMEDIA VOL30It's funny how when we see someone recording themselves in public, talking to their phone and exaggerating gestures, we feel a strong sense of secondhand embarrassment, yet that same video seems much more normal when we see it on social media. It might still make us cringe, but we process it differently. The key difference is that in real life, we don’t just feel discomfort—we perceive the person as ridiculous, out of place. On social media, even if they still seem absurd, the format smooths out that awkwardness and makes it easier to digest.
Editing, music, and dynamic cuts help frame the content in a way that fits the kind of media we consume daily, but if someone seems ridiculous, they’ll remain so, with or without filters.
Another factor is the break in reality. Watching someone film themselves strips away the illusion, like seeing a magician set up a trick before performing it. Then there’s the difference between witnessing something and being an audience—on the street, we feel like unwilling participants in something we didn’t choose to watch, whereas on social media, we’re already in consumer mode, so even if something makes us uncomfortable, it doesn’t trigger the same rejection.
Social dynamics also play a role. When we see someone recording in public, we share the secondhand embarrassment through glances or comments with whoever is next to us. But online, there's no external reinforcement, and we process it in a completely different way.
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Today's slow-motion moment.
THE NEW PANGEAvikingo
There is a geological theory suggesting that in about 200-300 million years, the movement of tectonic plates will once again merge the current continents into a supercontinent, similar to what happened with Pangea around 300 million years ago.
This concept is part of the supercontinent cycle, where landmasses drift apart and reunite over hundreds of millions of years due to continental drift. Geologists have proposed several possible scenarios for this future supercontinent, with some of the most discussed being:
Pangea Proxima: A supercontinent that would form in the same region as the ancient Pangea.
Novopangea: Would emerge if the Atlantic continues to expand while the Pacific closes, pushing continents into a new union pattern.
Aurica: Would form if the Indian Ocean disappears and the current continents shift toward the equator.
Amasia: In this scenario, North America and Asia would merge near the North Pole.
Although this is an extremely slow process, scientists can predict it by measuring the movement of tectonic plates. So, if the planet is still standing in 250 million years, we might once again have a single continent.
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Shall we take a walk?