Two ways to spend six minutes, episode 2

This is a series where I reflect on two ways to spend six minutes. The first way is always online, the second way is always offline. The aim is to contrast the experience of digital overstimulation with a moment of hyperpresence. 

Absorb the world’s anguish from the comfort of your home
Tell yourself you are not going insane
What you are seeing is not hyperbole
It is the worst thing you’ve seen since being alive 

Reload the feed to reveal a fresh atrocity
Read strangers argue over which bodies are worse when dead

Is eating a settler-colonial act?
Is Bitcoin halal or haram?
What would a Third World War mean for investors?
Check the recent price spike in Lockheed Martin stock
Peruse the Korean gorpcore line they just dropped (bomber jacket, $60)
Arrive at a digital resting point

See your friend make hummus to raise €710 for humanitarian aid
Recall that Bruno confused hummus with Hamas and that humour always finds a way 

Drop a pin in a Siberian city 
Switch to Street View
Click your way through a random neighbourhood
Look up how to become a Google Maps driver
Learn that they are mostly local freelancers 
I am a local freelancer
Stress momentarily about taxes 

On r/sadcringe, a Redditor shares a baby bump photo of his pregnent AI wife
“The world has gotten so weird in such a short amount of time,” someone remarks

An algorithm says a company wants to work with you
We pledge to plant 10 trees for every new customer, they say
Read the terms and conditions
We have no obligation to do this, is the gist     

Come across a new word—
derealization
Look it up
Top hits: WebMD and the Mayo Clinic
Check the symptoms
Feelings of detachment from one's surroundings (recurrent, persistent)
Self-diagnose

Click to simulate the sound of rain 
YouTube-play The Caretaker’s sonic interpretation of dementia 
Go to the comments—it’s like a funeral in there
The worst thing you will ever have to do is mourn the loss of someone who is still alive 
Feel your eyes well and your view soften 
Accept that everything will be forgotten

Mina’s hummus, via @eat_bibi

I rise from my chair, parched and poorly postured, as if fresh out of a dryer. In the hallway, I dislodge a moth corpse from the laces of my left running shoe. I put it on – the shoe, not the corpse – then I dress my right foot, stand up, and am jolted by a sudden clang from the courtyard.

Another chestnut has crashed onto the metal roof of the new bike rack and once again I think how dumb it was to put that there, a big rectangle made of the loudest material possible right below a highly fertile fruit tree. The imprudence of it all! We’re in the midst of a weeks-long chestnut monsoon. Summer’s over. Even autumn is beginning to narrow and flee. Things are dying now because they’re supposed to. 

I step out into the gray, into the very absence of colour, a German gray like a Lufthansa seat. At my feet are five Stolpersteine—bronze-plated concrete cubes inscribed with the names as well as the birth and death dates of Jews who were taken from this address and exterminated. You’re supposed to trip over the blocks and remember what happened here. What happened here was so many residents were taken from my building that they put a plaque with 47 additional names on the wall next to the Stolpersteine.

I’m on the same ground as always but in a world that is much different than four weeks ago. It’s a lush and foggy late afternoon, stunning conditions for a run. I want to exist briefly without thoughts, only sensations. Have I forgotten how to move? “You just put on your shoes and do it,” as my friend Emo said once. He has this sage Kenyan accent that makes everything he says sound like an ancient African proverb.

I’ve already taken the first step. Soon I feel like I’m drifting through space, beyond the reach of time, derealizing into an empty bliss beyond this world.

Your turn:

• How did you spend six minutes online today?

• What about offline?