Spend Time Offline
Knowledge of the world isn’t the same as experiencing the world. Why does online connection so often seem to lack aliveness, as compared to encounters with the world of flesh-and-blood people, nature, and material things? This paragraph from Karl Ove Knausgaard struck me as eloquent: “It feels as if the whole world has been transformed into images
... See moreSometimes it's harder, sometimes there are moments where you're like, man, I really wish I could escape this moment and go check Instagram or something, but instead I'm just going to sit here and my kid's crying and dinner's terrible because the kids are just being total jerks and I'm tired and not feeling great and my wife is upset because she's... See more
J.E. Petersen • Uncomfortable on Purpose
This, I think, is why most people can’t quit. It’s not just about addiction to the dopamine rush of likes and shares. It’s about survival. Careers, friendships, even identities are built on the currency of online presence.
The Elegance of Digital Disappearance
Because to not be online is to accept that you will be forgotten. This is the great, unspoken truth of our age. If you do not post, you do not exist.
The Elegance of Digital Disappearance
I had spent so long performing myself online that without social media, I wasn’t sure how to measure my own existence. What is a life unposted? What are thoughts that no one else can hear? Who am I, if not a series of updates and images, strategically packaged for consumption?
The Elegance of Digital Disappearance
At first, it was excruciating. The reflex to check, to post, to be seen was so deeply embedded that my hands kept reaching for my phone's app store like some desperate, lovesick Victorian heroine reaching for a lover who had long since stopped writing. Except my lover wasn’t a person, it was the feed . The infinite scroll, the algorithmic drip-feed... See more
The Elegance of Digital Disappearance
Because to not be online is to accept that you will be forgotten. This is the great, unspoken truth of our age. If you do not post, you do not exist. If you are not constantly reinforcing your presence, your relevance, your desirability, then you are slipping, shrinking, becoming unimportant. It is not enough to simply be anymore, you must be... See more
The Elegance of Digital Disappearance
I remember times when I was perfectly content doing things by myself - no internet required. I used to listen to music in the background, yes, the same CD would play in a loop while I got lost reading, making something, writing something, cleaning or tidying. Now I don’t have a CD player, music has most of the time been replaced by someone
... See moreThe internet doesn’t have to demand our presence the way it currently does. It shouldn’t be something we have to look at all time. If it wasn’t, maybe we’d finally be free to hang out. The first time I ever heard about Facebook, back in 2004, was from someone proudly declaring that she had just spent four hours using it. At the time, it was... See more