Tell Your Own Stories

Everyone has a story to tell. Whether it’s an epic narrative of triumph over tragedy or a modest every-day tale of just getting by, we’re all going through lives worth documenting and sharing... yet somehow it seems the stories we hear the most are those of the people we know the least.

It’s SUS (Story of Unknown Source)

At every step of your life, it seems, at every level of development and in every circumstance that you encounter, there is someone waiting there to tell you a story. If you are existing in a modern westernized commercial society, there is no moment of you life that is not scripted, produced and promoted to you… and interconnected with every other scripted and produced moment in your life. And if that weren’t enough, all of it is created by people you don’t know who likely do not share your values.

You’re Soaking In It

At this very moment I’m sitting in a coffee shop where some music is playing that documents some far-removed individual’s emotional wins or losses… I’ll drive by advertisements on my way to work that tell me how I should feel about myself and which products can help… I’ll experience news alerts, social media posts, and urgent emails about tax solutions, debt solutions, hair loss solutions and whatever I last looked at on Facebook (this week it’s tactical pants and inflatable kayaks) probably hundreds of times before I go to sleep tonight... and that’s assuming I don’t indulge in any movies, podcasts or video games before doing so.

As the old Palmolive dish washing liquid commercial used to say… “Where do you find it? Honey, you’re soaking in it!” Other people’s stories are all around us and we would have to do something the average person would consider ”extreme” to avoid any part of it… stay at home, shut off your phone, cut yourself off entirely from all media. It would be weird. People might become concerned. They might even call someone to report you.

But we have to ask ourselves what part of any of these stories have anything to do with us, with our ideals, our principles, values or goals? And let’s be honest… after all the other people’s stories we’ve absorbed over the years, do we even know what part of what we consider ourselves is still original and authentic?

Hyper-Mediation and You

This concept is living in a society saturated with manufactured stories is called “hyper-mediation” and if you haven’t already, it’s time you took notice of it. If you need some examples to make this concept real, consider the following questions:

Q: How many minutes per day do you sit quietly in an environment that is purely your own versus engaging directly or indirectly with sounds and images produced by someone you do not personally know?

Studies indicate that the average American spends over 7 hours per day directly looking at a screen, excluding time spent in proximity to imagery, messaging or other forms of produced experiences. Can you imagine what it would be like to sit quietly with your own thoughts or directly exchanging stories with another human being for seven hours a day?

Q: Who among your own family or direct personal acquaintances would you say is your greatest hero or inspiration and how much of their personal story could you recount from memory if asked?

It’s no accident that our culture is dominated by made up “heroes” from television, movies, music and sports about which people collect every available bit of information but that few people could recount the birthplace of their own parents or grandparents. While some of these characters are drawn from current events, history and mythos, many of them are not even authentic to that degree but rather are carefully crafted by people you don’t know whose values and motivations are not entirely clear to you, if at all.

Q: How often do you find yourself or the people around you telling stories in intimate detail about people, places and events that occurred in a television show or movie as though they were real?

My experience may be atypical, but in a given week I’d say that 65% of the conversations I overhear are about scripted characters in media (including politicians), 25% about pets, 8% about bosses and co-workers and 2% about actual other people… family, friends, lovers, etc. I should expect that in a healthy society, those numbers would be reversed.

Are We Not Entertaining?

What is it about ourselves and the people close to us that we find so blandly unremarkable that we’d rather immerse ourselves in stories crafted by other people for our consumption? Let’s be generous for a moment and offer some steel man arguments for why we prefer media over sharing deep, meaningful stories that connect us with ourselves and the people we love.

One might argue that we don’t talk about our personal experiences and social relationships because we value our privacy. But I have heard people say they have close personal friends who talk about their work stresses, their financial situation and their group alignments and share details of their pets, their daily conflicts, medical issues and even struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. But that person never seems to mention their friends, anyone they’re dating or any of their personal aspirations, goals, dreams or closely held ideals or beliefs. Unless they’re using that info to sell something. Perhaps it is a matter of privacy?

One might also suggest that we don’t dwell on our personal lives with each other because we feel they aren’t interesting enough to mention. Given the dynamic and often extreme “experiences” that the scripted characters we follow seem to go through on an episodic basis, maybe our own live-a-day lives seem dull by comparison. Have we gotten so used to the taste of artificial strawberry flavoring that we forgot how delicious real strawberries can be, even if they are a bit overripe and squishy at times?

And finally, we could argue that lots of people love to talk about themselves and their lives… and try to do so aggressively on social media every day… but nobody really cares to listen. I’m sure we all have that one acquaintance who if you were ever to make eye contact with or wave at them, they trundle over and start talking about whatever thought is going through their mind at the moment. If you’re like me, you learn to avoid contact with such people, which most likely just makes it harder for them to contain themselves and impossible to connect with them.

We are the Scripted Characters

So let’s flip the question around and ask ourselves “What is it about being other people’s scripted characters that we find so interesting?”

Let’s start with the first characters… the ones we originally created for ourselves. We can look at the heroes of our myths and legends and see something in them we desire for ourselves. Maybe it’s wealth, power, influence, youth or beauty… it could be unique skill or fantastic adventure, or just the respect and admiration of those around us. These are things that are hard to achieve in our own lives which we often are left to our own devices to seek. Heroes can guide us along the path to become better versions of ourselves, or at least to avoid the most common pitfalls that would thwart our efforts if not pointed out to us in advance. It’s probably why we started telling stories in the first place.

Going down a slightly darker path, we might create those heroes for ourselves just so we can watch them fall… or take them down ourselves. Anthropologists theorize that ancient hominids painted animals on cave walls in order to pre-visualize the hunt and gain mastery over the physical world without having to go out and experience its dangers directly. If the cave paintings at Lasceaux were the first VR experience, we can imagine all the stories since then where we set up our idols and then revel in their failures to be a similar form of self-elevation through virtual defamation and destruction.

At some point, those heroes of myth and legend were re-purposed, rebooted, copyrighted and turned into intellectual properties and media universes… no more authentic to us as heroes than Major League Baseball is to the sand-lot kids’ game from which it originated. And at the same time, we gave up our own stories and allowed our self-images to be captured, re-formulated and sold back to us in bottles, powders and consumer goods.

Our world has become hyper-mediated from the top down and the bottom up and, as I said, at every level inbetween.

The Person is the Product

So what does it mean when we become the characters of other people’s stories? I’m sure you’ve heard the the saying “If a product or service you use is free, then in truth it’s you who is being sold.” Is it any different if we allow ourselves to act as scripted characters in someone else’s narrative?

I dare say that very few people, if asked directly, would choose to give up their autonomy in favor of being told by a bunch of wealthy strangers who they should be, what they should think and how they should behave. Yet this is the very thing that we are doing… that we are paying our time, effort and money to do.

Perhaps the psychology of it it’s too much to go into in a simple blog post… I have thoughts (you can tell?) and I have friends who have other ideas about how we got here… but even if I can’t easily diagnose the cause and the process by which we’ve become consumer products, I can offer you the solution.

Unplug Yourself

No, I’m not doing a Matrix analogy here… I mean it literally. Turn off your TV, switch off your radio, disconnect your internet, shut down your computer, let your phone battery die… then invite a few friends to join you (go over to their houses and invite them in person if you must) and go do something together.

It doesn’t matter what you do… in fact, the more pointless and trivial it is, the better. Go for a walk, have a swim, cook a meal, play a simple game of pool or darts, draw silly pictures, tell each other stories about yourselves, your experiences and your dreams. Make plans. Create experiences. Live… and share your life with someone you know and care about.

And if someone wants to force their story into your brain, make them come to you and try do it by force. You’ll be surprised how obvious it is when you stop giving them the writing credits for your life and make them attempt to control you directly.