In 1936, Walter Benjamin declared that the primary mode of a spectator’s response to cinema is one of “shock.” Shock took the place of contemplation, the bearing that holds with respect to painting. But today, shock no longer characterizes perception adequately. Shock is a kind of immunoreaction. As such, it resembles disgust. Today, images no longer trigger shock. Even repulsive images are supposed to entertain (for instance, Fear Factor or I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!). Even disgusting images have been made consumable, and the totalization of consumption is eliminating every form of immunological recoil.
A strong immune system stifles communication. The lower the level of immunity is, the faster information circulates. A high level of immunity slows down the flow of information. Whereas immune defense impedes communication, liking promotes it. Rapidly circulating information also accelerates the circulation of capital. Today, immunosuppression allows massive quantities of information to penetrate us without any immune defense. A low threshold of immunity augments the consumption of information. At the same time, the unfiltered mass of information is dulling our senses. This fact is responsible for many psychic disturbances.
Information fatigue syndrome (IFS) is a psychic illness that is caused by excessive information. Patients complain about the progressive weakening of their analytic capacity, attention deficits, general unease, and inability to bear responsibility. The term was coined by British psychologist David Lewis in 1996. At the time, IFS affected people who had to process vast quantities of information on the job. Now, IFS affects everyone, because we all face rapidly growing masses of information.
One of the main symptoms of IFS is the deterioration of analytic skills. Analytic ability is what defines thinking, in particular. Information overflow weakens thought. Analysis is a matter of disregarding whatever does not bear on the object of reflection. Ultimately, then, it is the capacity to distinguish between what is essential and what is not. The tide of information to which we are exposed today is clearly interfering with our ability to boil matters down to their essence. Thinking necessarily involves negativity: discernment, discrimination, and selection. In other words, thought always proceeds exclusively.
More information does not necessarily lead to better decisions. Through the swelling mass of information, it is precisely our higher faculty of judgment that is now in a state of decline. Where information is concerned, less often has the effect of more. The negativity of omission and forgetting proves productive. Simply having more information and communication does not shed light on the world. Nor does transparency mean clairvoyance. On its own, a mass of information generates no truth. It sheds no light into the dark. The more information is set free, the more confusing and ghostly the world becomes. After a certain point, information ceases to be informative. It becomes deformative. Likewise, communication stops being communicative; henceforth, it is only cumulative.
Information fatigue includes symptoms that characterize depression. Above all, depression is a narcissistic malady. Overwrought, pathologically overmodulated self-reference makes one depressed. The narcissistically depressive subject hears only echoes of itself. Meaning exists only when it manages to recognize itself again. The world appears only in adumbrations of the self. Ultimately, the subject, exhausted and worn down by its own self, drowns in itself. Today, our society is becoming more and more narcissistic. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook are aggravating this process for they are narcissistic.
The symptoms of IFS also include an inability to bear responsibility. Responsibility depends on certain mental and temporal conditions. In the first place, it presupposes obligation and bindingness. As in acts of making a promise or showing trust, it binds the future. Such acts hold and stabilize the future. In contrast, contemporary communications media promote nonbindingness, arbitrariness, and the short term. The absolute precedence and priority of the present is the hallmark of our world. It is scattering time into a mere sequence of purely disposable presences. Thereby, the future is degrading into an optimized present. The totalization of the present destroys actions that give time, such as taking responsibility and making promises.