This writer says we've entertained ourselves so much that it hurts our ability to relate to others

If you spend a lot of time online, it can start to seem like we are all starring in our own TV shows. Like we’re all characters in some ironic drama.

But, that’s hurting our ability to relate to one another IRL — as we say — in real life. That’s according to our next guest, Megan Garber. In her new book "Screen People," out this week, she argues we have entertained ourselves into a state of emergency. In fact, that’s the subtitle of the book.

And, it starts right here in Arizona with a few escaped llamas back in 2015. The Show spoke with her more about the book, the dark side of the internet and those llamas.

Full conversation

MEGAN GARBER: It to me was such a pivotal moment in cultural history of the internet. Really, it was so fun, it was so random. These two llamas having broken away from their handlers, you know, they — they felt almost epic. And they were just kind of causing chaos in the streets, and you could sort of see it from above because of course news helicopters covered it. You could see traffic kind of parting for them.

It just had these absurd but also epic overtones that really fit what the internet I think is all about and what I loved especially about it was there was something so pure. There was something so delightful about it. The llamas themselves were never really in danger.

There was, you know, the stakes were in the end so very low that it was just kind of this perfect meme, this perfect kind of collective experience. You didn't need any background information to follow it. It was just kind of purely what it was. And the memes were wonderful, the jokes were wonderful. It was such a moment of people coming together on the internet to just be delighted and to have fun.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, yeah. And that feels very nostalgic now, a decade later, right? Because the internet does not feel like that kind of place anymore, which is sort of your premise here, right?

MEGAN GARBER: It really doesn't. And yes it is. And I — I don't love the premise in the sense that I came to it very slowly and a little bit regretfully because I was one of the people who, when the internet was new, I was a young reporter covering it and everything felt so full of possibility. I felt myself so optimistic about it, you know, "this is a town square, this is democratization, this is people having their voice." And in a lot of ways, some of that has happened.

But a lot of the negative stuff has happened too, and that's what the book focuses on. And I think, you know, just like even the words people use to describe the internet, you know, "hellsite" and — we talk about our broken brains and doomscrolling and lol-sobbing and, you know, just even the language that we tend to default to when we talk about the internet is so kind of inherently negative at this point.

So I think there's a general sense that something has gone awry. But I would also say it doesn't take away from the fact that the good stuff on the internet is still there. It's just perhaps we have to look a little bit harder than we used to to find it.

LAUREN GILGER: It doesn't — it doesn't capture all of our attention in the same way as it used to, I think. So — so let's talk about some of the, the downsides, the, the heavy parts of the internet today because it does feel like it's talked about in an incredibly negative way all the time, at the same time as we all spend an inordinate amount of time on it, right?

Like, that's kind of a paradox here, it feels like, and maybe one it feels like we almost cannot escape.

MEGAN GARBER: Yes. I think, you know, speaking of language, so often we talk about our relationship with the internet in terms of addiction, right? You know, this thing that we sort of can't escape, that we're there even though on some level we don't want to be.

And, and that was actually one of the animating ideas of the book because, you know, it is a little bit strange that there would be such a broad consensus that something is wrong, that this is a bad place in some kind of fundamental, basic way, and yet here we all are voluntarily in that place. You know, and whether it's addiction, whether it's something else, you know, the fact remains, there we all are.

LAUREN GILGER: Yeah, there we all are. And so you talk about in the book the addiction part of it in a way in which we're all living in — in two realities, right? Like, we live in our real lives, but our real lives are also sort of pretended online.

We're — you say we're both actors and audiences, producers and consumers, right? Like, how do you think that impacts us to think of our lives and ourselves as entertainment?

MEGAN GARBER: It, it impacts us so much. And I think what can happen when you get conditioned to see yourself as an actor, as a form of entertainment, as a spectator of other people who are providing their entertainment, I mean, what happens is things get dehumanized. That we, we have trouble sort of seeing each other as full people when we are mediated through the screens of the internet and, you know, again with language, we talk about for example main characters, main character energy, you know, people being canceled, people having plot arcs, people having brand identities, all these things.

And I think the language is kind of a symptom of this — the fact that we don't quite know what we are on the internet. We don't quite know how to see each other and therefore how to treat each other. And I think that explains a lot of the, the cruelty that can happen and a lot of the, the kind of ironic distancing that can be so much a part of the internet discourse.

LAUREN GILGER: It's like our, our value system has been upended. So where does that hit home for people? Where does that end up going offline and affecting people's real lives and, you know, real humanity?

MEGAN GARBER: I think it becomes just harder and harder to interact actually as people IRL, in real life. You know, if people are characters rather than full people, if they are actors in a show and kind of there for our entertainment, it really does become harder and harder to have normal and like human, I would say, interactions. It can be a little bit harder to even just have grace for mistakes.

And I think over time what can happen is in-person interaction, even in the physical world, even when screens and the internet are not technically involved, that kind of interaction can feel vulnerable. It can feel like it is meant to be a performance and therefore perfect and therefore, you know, polished and therefore, a good show and everyone must live up to these expectations.

And then when you don't, because of course you're not going to because real life is not a performance, it can feel like a disappointment.

LAUREN GILGER: So how do we get out of this, Megan? Is there an answer there? I know that this seems like a — an inescapable reality for us all, especially as we watch artificial intelligence sort of start to take over everything as well. Do you see a light at the end of this tunnel? Do you see a way that we can exist in these worlds and also be really human?

MEGAN GARBER: I do, actually. You know, in my research, one of the things that I kept finding and kept thinking about and being a little bit obsessed by, actually, was the idea of cynicism. The idea that like cynicism itself when it sets into people's mindsets and into a society as a collective, that itself can be so powerfully destructive. So many scholars of propaganda talk about cynicism as kind of the core thing that goes wrong, when societies kind of break apart.

And I think if we can fight cynicism, if we can fight this, you know, tendency for ironic distance, if we can fight the impulse to dismiss each other as characters in a show, to see each other's actions as performances, as performative as the language goes.

I think if we can try to resist that as individuals, that is a really big starting place because that alone will keep us a little bit inoculated from the forces of cynicism and that will then allow us to act as more of a collective and as more of a — yeah, as more of a powerful whole.

LAUREN GILGER: A powerful whole. I like that. A good place to end it. That is Megan Garber, staff writer for The Atlantic, author of the new book "Screen People: How We Entertained Ourselves into a State of Emergency." She also co-hosts the podcast "How to Know What's Real."

Megan, thank you so much for coming on. Congratulations on the book.

MEGAN GARBER: Thank you so much.