The main difference between digital and analog signal is that digital signal is sampled. Little snapshots of analog that are made every 1/44000 part of second. Although it can get very close, it will never be the exact same copy and will always be missing the uninterrupted, flawless structure that lies behind the electrical current flowing through the cable or needle scratching the surface of the vinyl record. By constantly checking social networks, messengers and email, you introduce little breaks that insert themselves between samples of the real life that you continue living. But during these breaks, you’re outside of it, in an empty, sterile artificial medium where there’s literally nothing — undefined, New Document, about:blank, call it whatever you like. And while being there, you expose your mind to any garbage that it’s normally shielded from by the analog noise floor. Because there, in the sterility of the anonymous nothingness, you can hear and feel anything and everything, at the same time, an be equally vulnerable to all of it. This is why being hurt by zero likes or a creepy comment feels actually much more painful than being punched in the face in the real life situation.

In audio production, this phenomenon is known as “intersampling peaks” — shit that happens between the samples, something that digital system cannot handle. This is the thing that can completely screw up otherwise flawlessly sounding track if you don’t take care of it in your processing chain. Being addicted to social networks and repeatedly checking websites in order to feel satisfied / loved is very much like desperately trying to emulate digital glitches on an expensive analog gear you somehow got for free from birth — sure you can achieve it, but what’s the point?