What It's Like to Be Off Social Media
Now that we’re on the other side of these consequences, I can no longer kid myself. It’s time to stop ceding our humanity to these platforms. It’s time to invest back into IRL community. It’s time to stop 24/7 scrolling social media—you will not find the answers there.
Touching grass isn't enough
I realized one of the key reasons why social media makes me feel so out of joint with the world, and with myself. I think all of these ideas—the messages implicit in these mediums—are wrong.
Johann Hari • Stolen Focus: Why You Can't Pay Attention--and How to Think Deeply Again
Some people have told me I’m not doing enough—that I should publish more, react to breaking news, tweet every day, start a podcast. But to what end? More subscribers but less pride in my work? Host a podcast but constantly cringe because it’s not really me?
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there seems to be an assumption now that if you don’... See more
I don’t know if you’ve noticed this, but there seems to be an assumption now that if you don’... See more
if I wanted to use the web in a personal way, it seemed better to do so through social media. But this felt like a job too! Everything in social media is explicitly quantified with likes and shares and retweets. All the platforms have a notification bar to show you which random utterance of yours was gaining in popularity, implying that you could r... See more
introduction
there’s this struggle in my head. Is the world ending, or is it a nice day and I’m getting coffee? Obviously, it’s not a binary thing, but living this way is sometimes brain-scrambling. It’s not like the constant doom and gloom of Twitter was making me a better climate activist. Instead I’d be paralyzed. Twitter incentivizes you to live in this con... See more