This is why the internet exists.

I posted this tweet: 
 

Basically, just something that was sitting on my mind while I was looking at the trending hashtags. I don't know, I thought it was profound and wanted to gauge with others if my idea was profound or not (measurable by likes, retweets, etc.)

Because that's real data of public belief/opinion of your idea.

anyways, I digress. I posted that tweet and saw that someone liked it. Curious, I wanted to see who? Was it someone that actually follows me? No, this person was looking at the hashtag, most likely. Then I clicked their profile, then I saw they had a website. 

"Cool." I thought. It was like, I saw this thing that someone put effort into. Someone created something out of nothing. They put their time, their resources, and their creative soul into something. It's like, the art of the new age. Digital art, in a meta-art sort of way.

I was peering into this thing that someone could have committed years of work into. Literal years of work. And even though I didn't like it that much (sorry, just not my kind of music). I realized that this is why the internet exists.

We've been steadily on the decline in terms of square footage of housing space per person. Like a metric, where the smaller the square footage, the closer people are relative to each other.

Just as an example, let's say an average household was 5 members, in a 1500 sq. ft. house. Their square footage per person on average is 300 square feet (1500 sq.ft / 5 people).

Throughout the modern era, we've been seeing increasingly larger and larger square footage. Just as an arbitrary (and honestly, incorrect) example: Let's say that in the 1950s, their square footage per person was 100 square foot per person. Over time, that's steadily increased to 200 square foot per person in the modern era (the 2000s and onwards).

The point is - that phenomenon is true. Why it's happening? I don't know. It could be because number of people per household is decreasing while house sizes are staying constant (very real possibility) or house sizes increased due to the economic expansion of the 2000s (though I doubt it, that's just noise in the grand scheme of things).

The point is - we're getting increasingly more and more distant from each other in a literal, physical sense.

Take this - I barely talk to random strangers. Honestly. I hate small talk, I'm an introverted-extrovert in the sense that I'll be open and socially intelligent and great once I actually have a reason to meet somebody.

I know I'm not alone in this - If I don't have a reason to meet somebody, I probably won't extend a true display of my vulnerable self to that person (in less pretentious terms: I won't go out of my way to come up with some justification to introduce myself to somebody.) 

(also side note - This is why I'm terrible with women. But that's a huge digression for another time).

Anyways. This person (that I found through a random musing I decided to put on twitter) put their time, effort, and literal creative soul on display for anyone to see. And I mean anyone. And that was such an efficient means of communication in the truest sense.

Seriously, think about that. The internet is a means in which a person's ideas, beliefs, values, (which, when abstracted and regurgitated out in a creative interpretation i.e. song, speech, tweet, etc.) can be instantly delivered. Something that would have taken at least a few months of social interactions can be transacted literally instantly and can occur at seemingly random moments in your life.

It's like, the stars just aligned and I randomly saw this person's website. And although I didn't browse further, maybe you're doing the same with this post.

(Woah, this is self-aware about its self-awareness. I think I've pushed the boundaries of too meta for this post).

All I hope to do is explain that we can choose to be cynical. I've done it. It harmed my mental health in so many ways. 

But I've also learned to extend my understanding to allow for other's beliefs to be entertained in my head. Because what a person truly believes is a true sense of character. And if I believe people should have some inherently good reason (hopefully) to (sometimes fervently) believe this thing, then the least I can do is extend an olive branch of understanding to entertain the possibility.

Open a dialogue. Share knowledge. Grow and learn, together. 

Because human beings are just learning machines. Our brains are wired to learn.

And we're all stuck here on this planet with other human beings with the same kind of self-consciousness, the same struggles, the same pain.

So we might as well do what we're wired to do with the people we're stuck here with to make the place we're stuck on just a little bit better. One day at a time.