Sitting prey
When a human knows it is being watched, their nervous system reacts. You might feel a tingle, a slight sensation on the back or sides of your neck indicating that you are being perceived by another’s gaze. This is such an important instinct, the ability to tell when others are watching us. It’s a protective measure for so many reasons and once you become attuned to your nervous systems quietest trip wires, you come to understand what modern society is suppressing, and alarming, in all of us. This happens on such a subconscious level we have come to not notice it much except in cases where we might also think it makes sense to be in danger, like when walking alone at night. But I know for myself, my nervous system reacts anytime another person enters my space; all perceptions cue a nervous system response where our body must determine if the external presence is a threat or not. My body happens to be disabled in this area so I feel threatened by the presence and expectations of others. My disability has taught me that the more people I encounter, the more my nervous system must respond. While not everyone has my PDA Autistic nervous system, I do believe it’s a spectrum and we all exist on a scale of nervous system sensitivity. I believe we’re becoming more sensitive as a species, and our trauma and perceived traumas are being passed down to next generations.
When the internet was invented, we suddenly had the potential to be perceived by vast numbers of people at once without our physical body ever having to leave home. As it’s evolved to its current state, we’ve seen the rise of whole industries based on the cultivation of online identities. Our ability to film, edit, filter, remix, and present a completely fictional version of ourselves for mass consumption has both given people the opportunity to build audiences, and forced all of us towards the complex processing of perception that comes along with fame and the trauma of powerlessness to shape how you’re viewed by others. More people are dealing with inner and external conflict than ever before as they manage their real existence, their online existence, and the space between what we are capable of and what we believe is expected of us in order to be widely accepted. In order to appeal to wider audiences and thwart rejection and abuse, thus increasing safety and security, more people are feeling an intense pressure to meet the perceived or spoken expectations of others and the algorithms running the apps. Our ability to be seen and accepted or rejected by what feels like the whole world presents a new actual danger that humanity has never encountered before. I believe our species’ nervous systems had a mass shift towards fight and fawn away from flight and freeze, causing mass anxiety to spike, vigilance to rise and more and more conflict to occur as we became ever so sensitive to perceived threats and slights in an arena we can’t exit. In short, we’ve never been more exposed as a species.
Flight and freeze are not viable security options in the digital sphere. They do not help because the threat is not physical or even temporal but much more abstract and mental. Flight and freeze attempt to remove us from actual and perceived threats in the hopes to protect us. They do nothing against online threats because leaving does not end the perception or judgement we feel. Not responding or blocking is the closest we can get to freeze, but that requires a level of confidence most don’t have when they enter the digital sphere. Freezing is only a survival skill for those with camouflage; for the rest of us it leaves us sitting ducks for abuse. Fight and fawn however acknowledge that removing ourselves is not an option and the perceived threat must be met or engaged with in some way. It feels to me our species has calculated our best bet at surviving the internet is to fight it or please it. Now ask yourself, isn’t that how you feel most of the time when engaging online? The feeling of meeting demands or being sitting prey in this system increases because our escape options have diminished. It feels like we must play along with this world we didn’t create. So many feel powerless right now against large systems. All of this increases our sense of vigilance and ensures we are trapped in a state of nervous system response all the time. Now ask yourself who is benefitting from you feeling vigilant all the time.