I went to a split-screened rave last week. Picture this: a boiler room on the top floor of The Grand in Wellington. Frothing crowd of mid-20s, sunglasses on (despite the dark) and exposed skin slick with sweat, surrounding the DJ. And above it all, Minecraft and Subway Surfers projected onto an upside-down pyramid protruding from the ceiling, with Steve cutting shapes to DJ Bax’s ‘Gucci Flip Flops’. It happened – casual split-screens are here.
Generation Zero are slaves to stimulation. As we spend more time online, flicking through an endless stream of short-form videos that are allowed a split second to hook us before moving onto the next, our attention spans have become more fried than your brain cells in O-Week. There’s hardly a spare moment in the day when we aren’t consuming at least one form of media. You’ll find yourself parked in the lounge, TV on whilst chipping away at an assignment on your laptop, then pausing to answer messages on your phone and inevitably falling into a pit of Instagram Reels once again.
Split-screens have become the norm to retain attention spans. We saw it first with TikToks that split the main video with another video for pure stimulation to make the brain go “brrr” – soap cutting and Subway Surfers are a personal fave. When students returned to lecture theatres after split-screening their way through the pandemic, a Critic writer and self-described TikTok addict (having spent 12 hours a day scrolling at one point) wrote an article prescribing split-screen videos for each degree. This was in acknowledgement of “how difficult it can be to concentrate on lectures after years of having our attention spans fried. Sometimes putting lectures on 2x speed just doesn’t cut it, and our malnourished Zoomer attention spans yearn for even more stimulation.”
In a recent conversation with friends, we despaired over our dwindling attention spans. While at university, one mate used to split-screen Sims and Netflix on her laptop, lecture recording and notes on her monitor. Another says she can’t go a minute in silence, and is always listening to audiobooks as she goes about her day. A third couldn’t fathom the idea of having a shower without listening to music. We ironically quoted TikToks where users wondered what ever happened to just “having a think”. We yearned for an alternate reality of living slowly, taking pleasure in the banality of everyday life. Making things from scratch or simply rawdogging a walk without headphones and allowing your mind to wander. Phones were checked multiple times during the conversation.
What began as a joke has seeped into reality. Med students aren’t splitting lectures with pimple popping videos just yet – slides depicting anally-inserted foreign object x-rays are entertaining enough – but it seems like we’re getting closer. It was with those same despairing friends that I stared slack-jawed at Subway Surfers last week. Gigs were once a haven for the tactile. It’s the techno equivalent of touching grass: moving your body to the thump of music, holding hands with friends to squeeze through the mosh, and bumping shoulders with sweaty strangers. The one I went to encouraged this – the sign at the entrance to the rave had asked attendees to try and refrain from going on their phones, so my best guess is that the distraction was to stimulate the withdrawals that the phone-addicted masses would’ve been experiencing.
It made me think about how everyone’s equally enchanted and freaked out by the advancement of AI. We’ll gather around a mate’s laptop and enter prompts for Chris Luxon riding the steps of the Beehive on a moa or some shit, or ask ChatGPT to come up with the best pick-up lines. Then we’ll also bite our nails over the implications of AI on our job prospects and how rapidly it’s outpacing legislation. It’s fun. It’s scary. I was mesmerised by Minecraft parkour while having a quiet existential crisis in the back of my alcohol-addled mind. That said, if you’re hosting at your flat and want to make sure the crowd doesn’t grow bored and move onto the next best thing, just chuck Minecraft Steve on your TV. Works a treat.