Member-only story

The Internet Is Our Collective Unconscious

Ben Thomas
7 min readNov 26, 2024

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I remember one of the first times I found reddit. It felt like a secret world where everyone could anonymously share their best tips, dirtiest secrets and everything else good, bad and dirty. Thread after thread, I felt this amazing sense of connection as I poured over these stories of love, solitude, perseverance and mishaps. Memes mutated seemingly unique experiences into shared stories. Heroes and villains were collectively adored and rejected. Narratives, trends and jokes spread with ease. This of course isn’t restricted to Reddit. We can look at the rise of the Arab spring where social media played a key role in spreading revolutionary dissent across the Middle East. We can also see, more recently, the popularity of Pro-Palestinian content emerging om platforms like TikTok, in direct contrast to most mainstream media narratives. It’s as if the internet represents this collective narrative with no singular author but rather a global community of anonymous scrollers, likers and trolls, all vying for a piece of the total digital sum. And while this is going on, 24/7, we continue our daily routines in boring reality, awaiting the ethereal bliss of that deep blue glow.

But then came a creeping realization. My personal thoughts and ideas weren’t so unique after all. I kept seeing myself reflect back to me.. It was as if every thread, every post, was a pixel in some…

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Ben Thomas
Ben Thomas

Written by Ben Thomas

Creator of Sisyphus 55 and currently pursuing my Phd in Clinical Psychology.

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