We scream to drown out the void.
You ever notice how uncomfortable it gets when the world just shuts up?
You sit there, and suddenly your brain starts playing its greatest hits, like a broken record:
“Why are you so awful?
Why have you failed at everything?
How much longer before you die alone and unloved?”
It’s like your own brain has been waiting for the moment you finally turn off the noise, just so it can assault you with the reality of your utter insignificance.
No one wants to be alone with their thoughts. Because when you're alone with your thoughts, you're stuck with the awful truth that there’s nothing of importance going on in your life. So, we fill the void with distractions—constant distractions. TV, social media, podcasts about how to live your best life—you know, anything to avoid the soul-crushing, existential dread that comes with thinking, “Is this really all there is?”
And that’s the horror of silence. It’s not just empty space; it’s the room where all your deepest, most uncomfortable questions lurk. You can’t escape them. There’s no Netflix show or tweet to scroll past the absolute pointlessness of it all. That’s why we’re addicted to noise. It’s not entertainment, it’s a shield.
We’re afraid that if we stop for one second, we might have to acknowledge that life’s just a long, slow march to a grave, and all the noise is just us trying to outrun that inevitable truth.
We’d rather be glued to our phones, check our emails, even watch cat videos, than sit in silence and have to hear ourselves think.
Because what if your brain starts asking questions like, “What’s the point of all this? Why even bother?” Well, let me tell you, once you let that seed of doubt in, it’s like opening a bag of bad acid. Suddenly, you’re deep in the woods, wondering if everyone’s just faking it, if the world’s a joke, and if you’re just a sucker for buying into it.
And you know what? That’s why silence is the real horror show.
The world isn’t scary, it’s just loud enough that you don’t have to confront it. But take the noise away, and you’re stuck in a room with your own mind, and that’s where all the demons live. It’s where the real panic attack begins. And let’s face it—no one’s ever ready to deal with the quiet.
So we crank up the noise, get another podcast in, and keep running away from the fact that one day, it’s just going to be you and the silence, and neither of you are gonna be happy about it.