30 January

Humans imitate each other. Not just every now and then, it’s pretty much all they ever do, at every age. And why do they imitate? To achieve status. To belong, to have an identity. Imitation gives you membership of any given group, it’s what makes you recognisable as a member of one group rather than another. Look around and you will see this *everywhere*, in all parts of life. Cars, clothes, food, music, language, ideas, beliefs, body shapes, etc. The conflict in our world is the clash of all of these imitation-driven groups. Imitative rivalry, as Rene Girard called it. Where statuses collide. Social media has swamped the world because it targets this exact behaviour. Things ‘go viral’. It’s the most addictive thing humans have ever created. The most basic ‘here‘s what I’m doing’ post is nearly always imitation of some kind. Like wearing a puffy jacket, or travelling to Bali. The world outside social media is increasingly shaped by it, we’re living in its bubbles. Because imitation leads to rivalry and conflict, this also means social media is making the world much more violent, at an accelerating rate. The more social or connected we become, the more we copy each other and the more violent we become. Ask the kid on the fringes of groups at school how violent this all is. They know.