People's Averageness

Yesterday, I went on the most efficient sightseeing tour of Paris that I’ve ever done. My friend Philip was visiting and we decided to strap our running shoes on and run to the Eiffel tower. We ended up running by a lot of the most famous attractions in Paris and even discovered some new ones. Using your own legs still seems to be the most enjoyable, convenient and efficient way to get around in a dense yet wide reaching city like Paris. You have nothing to worry about besides putting one foot in front of the other. You are not limited by any terrain and you never have to look for parking.

After over 1.5h of running/walking we ended up at the Louvre Museum and took this classic pic.

Running through Paris also allowed us to observe a lot of tourists and just people in general. And so one of the things that shook me yesterday was that the average person seems less “perfect” and more “average” than I thought.

Paris seems to be a city that attracts a decent sample of a heterogenous European population. And so it allows you to observe what the true current state of people is. The internet on the other hand doesn’t do a good job at truly representing the “averageness” of people. If the internet or the metaverse truly wants to compete with the real world one day, it needs to figure out a way to bring averageness into the digital realm. Maybe a day of people observing in Paris could be a good benchmark?

For me the real life always makes me feel more human and just good about my own averageness. The transition to something digital that can give me the same feeling as the worlds averageness, still seems to be far away.