Have you ever wondered when exactly the world became so insanely fast? I mean, I was born in '76, I'm not a dinosaur. Yet sometimes I feel like an analog person in a digital world that seems to spin faster and faster.
TikTok. The word alone. It used to be the sound of a clock, now it's the soundtrack of an entire generation. And me? I simply don't get it. There are grown adults, probably some of you, voluntarily consuming these random video snippets. Ten seconds here, fifteen there. An endless stream of, forgive me, digital garbage. Years ago, this stuff might have run on some trash TV channel as filler. You'd only watch it if you were stuck in bed with a 103-degree fever and even changing the channel was too exhausting. It was crap. And it's remained crap. Only now people are addicted to it. I can't keep up with that.
You know what still baffles me? This romantic notion of evolution I once had. This naive "things always get better." Humans evolve, improve their circumstances, create better lives for themselves. Yeah, right. We've created tools that control us. Daily updates on every system. We're constantly charging batteries for various devices. This is supposed to be progress?
On top of that, sensory overload has reached a point where I wonder if I'm the only one who still notices we're all collectively losing our minds. Texts are only scanned, not read. Emails over ten lines give people anxiety attacks. And WhatsApp? People send cryptic emojis like modern cave painters. Thumbs up, eggplant, fireworks, conversation done. Isn't that actually communicative devolution? From Goethe to grunts in just three generations.
Attention spans shorter than my shutter speeds for action shots.
Here's the joke: Most people don't even want to communicate anymore. They want to broadcast. Transmission instead of dialogue. Everyone's transmitting but expecting receivers. That can't work.
And me? I've become part of the problem. My output has probably increased tenfold in the last 15 years. Tenfold! Where I used to spend two weeks perfecting a photo series, carefully selecting 20 perfect images and agonizing over the sequence for hours, now I produce on an assembly line. Not because I want to. But because budgets are shrinking. And in the daily grind, I'm forced to adapt.
Please don't get me wrong. I still pour my heart into every single image. I can't help it. But the sheer volume? It eats at me. It's like a Michelin-starred chef suddenly having to churn out cafeteria food at industrial kitchen speed. The craft is still there, but the soul suffers.
Sometimes, when I lie awake at night, like right now, I wonder where this is all heading. This acceleration, this superficiality, this eternal hunger for more content, more input, more of everything. Will we eventually reach an attention span of zero? Will even the thought of having a thought be too long?
So I continue. Producing my images, trying to salvage as much quality as possible. And secretly hoping that someone, someday, will hit the brakes. Or that we'll collectively crash into a wall and then be forced to really look again among the rubble. Not just scan, swipe, like. But to see. Really see.
Until then, I sit here, MacBook on my stomach, writing these lines. For you. For me. For no one. The main thing is, it's out there.
P.S. My cover image: An unlocked bicycle in front of the bakery — like from another era. So calming, so unhurried. When my gaze fell through the window during the shoot, I had to capture this scene.