[Your Voice - XXIII]
Your voice is unique. And fragile.
Troll farms can produce millions of words, phrases, and images that replicate a generic “voice”. Which is to say: voiceless communication, uncritically engaged and merely consumed, is easy to produce. Inanimate, preprogrammed bots can do it.
But no one and no thing can reproduce your voice. They can reproduce the sound of your voice, if they have enough recorded material, but they can’t duplicate it.
Your voice is less like a precious, valuable stone, however, and more like a rare orchid: it can’t be forged, and it is easily killed. Our voice is fragile. It takes time to find, cultivate, and use, and with little effort it can be damaged.
I’ve found the easiest way to kill it is to consume more media.
20 years ago it was watching TV.
10 years ago it was streaming videos.
Now, it's a mosaic of media, the most prominent being the Big Socials. And here’s the dark side of this observation: in scrolling and consuming, we feel like we’re making an investment in our voice. You’re not. I’m not. Instead, we’re doing damage, threatening to kill the gift that is given to us.
