Sweet Martha’s and the Illusion of Reality

The Minnesota State Fair draws millions of people together for twelve days of food and fun. Throughout the years, one of the highlights for our family is Sweet Martha’s cookies. They bake around a MILLION cookies every DAY at the state fair. You literally can’t walk anywhere around the fairgrounds without seeing a squashed cookie on the ground dropped from overflowing buckets. Now you could just buy a frozen package from the store, but there’s something about smelling and tasting the freshly baked cookies while surrounded by thousands of people with music in the distance and sweat dripping down your face. Baking Sweet Martha’s cookies at home is a lot like communicating online. It’s just a PART of the full reality of that offline experience.

The online world is a disembodied world. It falls short of the physical, human reality of the embodied, offline world. And gone are the days of dial-up internet. There’s no more logging in and logging off. With smartphones in our pockets and global connectivity, the offline and online worlds have converged. We call this convergence the curtain or illusion of reality, and how we navigate this shadow area and engage in disembodied communication determines positive or negative outcomes for individuals and society.

Because communication is the foundation of existence; without it human life and shared experience can fall apart in the embodied world. Everything we do online is communication. It’s input and output. Posting photos and videos, commenting, and texting are how we communicate to the world and those we’re connected to. Watching Instagram Reels or Netflix, online education, tracking news, or even simply surfing the web is the world communicating to us. Games have storylines and chat. Even AI prompts and responses are communication, only with a machine instead of a human.

How we communicate online matters, and there are endless considerations that can positively or negatively affect what we produce and consume online like the depth of relationship, proximity and timing, visibility and audibility, the weight of conversation, and whether or not a machine or algorithm is part of the interaction... just to name a few. Understanding the online world’s limitations can help us foster offline relationships.

For example, consider a FaceTime call to comfort a grieving friend. Though you’re physically separated by distance and can hear and see each other in real time, it still lacks the one key physical expression to convey support... a hug. It’s amazing we have technology like this, and it’s not a bad thing. But it’s still an illusion, or shadow of reality.

Or imagine you stumble upon a post from someone you’ve never met that gets your blood boiling, and that inner troll really wants to tear the author to shreds in the comments section. You’re physically separated by distance and time, and you can’t hear or see each other. This is where the screen is a shield, the keyboard is your weapon, and anonymity is your ally. Your aggression increases, your empathy decreases, and you uncharacteristically become, as Mike Tyson noted about social media, “way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”

It’s a lot like driving a vehicle, which in a way is a disembodied experience. Our only means of communication is driving behavior, light signals, and sometimes gestures. I doubt I’m the only one to express things in a vehicle that I might not say or do to someone face to face. It’s a great example of how, just like being online, the quality of communication diminishes the farther we stray from physical reality, and the less effective it is. And when paired with anonymity, the more difficult it is to submit, as Abraham Lincoln puts it, to “the better angels of our nature.”

When we understand, with all of its limitations, how the online world, social media, gaming, and AI function (know your vehicle), and view the overlap through guiding principles (find your compass), we can confidently navigate the disembodied world (choose your path) to benefit humanity, which is the foundational principle lens of Driver’s Training for the Online World.

Recognizing this curtain of reality might help us realize that a heavy conversation might be better over a meal than messaging, or the best choice of the day might be NOT clicking that link, or putting down the controller and getting outside, or seeking companionship with fellow humans, with all of our shortcomings, instead of AI chatbots.

The online world should always point back to the offline world, back to humanity and cultivating real-world relationships. Otherwise, we’re sucked into a black hole where devices and platforms meant to connect us can actually fuel loneliness and fracture relational bonds that hold society together.

Instagram.com. TikTok.com. Netflix.com. ChatGPT.com. They’re called web domains... kingdoms where tech wizards masquerading as gods want us to dwell as long as possible because it’s good for their bottom line. They design products that keep us in the backseat while demanding sacrifice... of our attention, autonomy, integrity, privacy, and ultimately... our humanity.

When we’re in the driver’s seat, the online world has the potential to build offline bridges with family, friends, and strangers alike. A spontaneous word of encouragement is life-giving in someone’s inbox. Gaming with friends can create strong relational bonds. Even AI can be used in ways to dedicate more of your time to the offline world. It’s okay to grab a tube of Sweet Martha’s dough from the grocery store and bake your own cookies. Just remember to share them with friends.