how to survive being chronically online

True disconnection, like true wilderness, is an empty goal. Whether we have shunned social media or not, the internet does not cease to exist as a driving force in the world, any more than ecological systems cease to shape our lives the minute we reach the end of the forest trail and hop back in the car. The concepts of the “offline world” and the... See more

It’s been endlessly argued that algorithms influence too much of what we watch, listen to, read, and even think. Personal taste erodes while decision-making is outsourced to the platform.

To feel creatively and intellectually alive, you have to stop mindlessly consuming the Internet and start mindfully curating it.

In that way, some consumers have yielded to a type of techno-fatalism. People know that algorithms exist and often dictate how culture is disseminated to them—and that there’s not much they can do about it, save for abandoning the platforms altogether and embracing a retro-Luddism about their consumption choices.

Mid is a perfect bit of new slang for a culture in which quantity is crushing quality, in which you can stream endlessly and feel nothing.

I have thousands of photos of my children but few that I’ve set aside to revisit. I have records of virtually every text I’ve sent since I was in college but no idea how to find the ones that meant something. I spent years blasting my thoughts to millions of people on X and Facebook even as I fell behind on correspondence with dear friends. I have... See more

The hyperlink, in this sense, is the building block of the modern internet.