Has anyone noticed that our lives have come to resemble cartoons, a cartoonification if you will?

What with all the CGI, AI, VR, meme-ification and the like, it is a wonder we can still see ourselves as living, breathing beings and not Woody Woodpecker avatars. Everything we see, touch and feel has become altered, edited or made to fit for proper consumption.

We live in a state of constant hyper-reality where we have no alternative but to be over-stimulated, over-amazed, over-inundated and overwhelmed.

How did we get here? Think TikTok. Think video games. Think super hero blockbusters. If we choose, we can live in this heightened state of activity where images, jingles and sound bites of information constantly fly past the screen of our minds, never giving us adequate time to process, only to prepare our senses for the next onslaught.

I’ve seen it in insomniac friends who spend their late-nights watching online videos and texting into the wee hours.

It’s no wonder the brain can’t rest.

I think it all began when CGI (computer generated imagery) began its annihilation of films.   Suddenly, whole universes were created where super-heroes ruled and constant visual stimuli and booming sounds began tickling the fibers of our little brains. These feel good. They make us feel alive and immerse us in a world far different from the reality of ours.

We can escape our lives with the flick of a remote control.

Think about the effects of social media. We have come to believe that a 5-second TikTok clip is how people really live, or that those Facebook posts show how truly happy our friends are.  Simply go online and you can see how beautiful the world is, even though it might not be ours or even be real for that matter.

We are all grappling for our Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame. Look at all the perfectly chiseled, meticulously coiffed images which bombard us. We have even created a term, “influencers,” for those who spend countless hours preening to gain followers and advertisers.

Do I really want to be influenced by 20-something-year-olds who still live in their parent’s houses telling me this is how I should dress, talk, think or live my life?

Or how about the pilot who deliberately crashed his airplane so he could gain additional followers on social media. Really? Yes.

What about “meme-ification?”

We don’t even have to think for ourselves or form our own opinions. We can simply Google “XYZ meme” and find a plethora of humorous images to convey what we think we should think. Often, these memes are mean, sarcastic or caustic.

Studies show that negative social media posts get re-tweeted or viewed far more often than positive ones, so it stands that a good, nasty meme, might get replayed over and over again. On Instagram, I came upon a severely anorexic woman with a caption, Me after I wolf down fries which was created by a young “content creator.” I responded “Not funny.” And she chimed back, “Go away, what are you like 70?” Worse thing was she had tons of likes for an obviously cruel post.

I want my 15 minutes, so feel free to repost.

We talk about gun violence and how mental health or unrestricted gun access are to blame. I think there’s more to it than that. From a young age, children are desensitized to violence. They see it in movies where people die gracefully and they play it out every afternoon while perched in their $300 gaming chairs. Shooting people and watching them splatter is fun and can help me win the game. The gorier the better.

We all know death in reality is not like a video game or a Quentin Tarantino film. Don’t we?

Finally, the newest wave, AI, artificial intelligence, is perhaps the most frightening of all. Yes, hackers are now capable of making – you – or at least a replica good enough to fool someone you love.

A mother recently received a call that her daughter had been kidnapped. She even heard her daughter’s voice pleading to give the kidnappers $1 million. The mother immediately dialed her daughter’s cell phone and learned she was safe and sound. Scammers had cloned her voice off a social media post.

Cartoons are meant to be funny, but the ones that are becoming our lives may not be. I think I better go online and find an influencer who can teach me how to calm down so I can better deal with all this.

And with that, I end this as “Poolside from PS.”