Space Travel at the ‘CLICK’ of a Button

Cyber-space - the NEW final frontier, or so some like to think.  

With such an endless, virtual labyrinth at our disposal it’s easy to get lost among the bombarding of ads and hyperlinks, but for the modern day ‘flaneur’ that is exactly what they are looking for. Barnes uses the metaphor, “a prince who is everywhere in possession of his incognito” – a person’s whose aim in to disappear in the space of the city – to describe ‘the flaneur’ (Barnes, 1997). In the case of the virtual reality lived in by many today the ‘cyber-flaneur’ is not much different.

The ‘cyber-flaneur’ wanders anonymously through the vast space of the Internet going wherever their curiosity and cursor’s take them, basking in the glory it holds. This description almost makes them out to be mystical and omnipotent beings, when in reality most people are performing these acts while scrolling through their news feeds and switching between tabs.

'Get Lost Amongst the Chaos' 

(The Diplomat, 2016)

For the social media ‘Tumblr’, unless you go on the site with a particular goal in mind, it is almost certain that you will spend anywhere between 10 minutes on the bus to countless hours while lying in bed scrolling through the network feed ‘re-blogging’, ‘commenting’ and ‘hearting’ posts. It is extremely easy for someone to get lost in the constantly refreshing feed, entranced by a toxic cocktail of cat video’s, memes and bizarrely relatable shit-posts.

This phenomenon can be related to Barnes’ description of Debord’s concept of ‘Derive’. He writes “[that people in ‘derive’] let themselves be drawn by the attractions of the terrain and the attractions they find there” (Barnes, 1997). He also notes that this is one of the main methods of classifying the ‘cyber-faneur’. The character that is the ‘cyber-faneur’ plays the role of the adventure and explorer, and while he seems far from our grasp – we too are space-cowboys in this virtual world.

Bibliography

(2016, Feburary 24). Retrieved August 19, 2016, from The Diplomat: http://thediplomat.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/thediplomat_2016-02-24_16-27-47-386x250.jpg

Barnes, G. (1997). Passage of the Cyber-Flanuer. Otago University.

Ceranic, I. (2013, March 4). Social media addiction a growing concern. Retrieved August 19, 2016, from ABC News: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-21/social-media-addiction-feature/4533228