- I'm so much happier now that I'm not overeating! - I'm tellin' you, man - you may love those carbs but take it from me I've been keto for three months now and it's totally changed my life. - It's great - since I stopped smoking I can taste my food again. - I stopped drinking and I've never felt better. - So glad I gave up my weekly card game. I've got like an extra $250 every friday now. - I mean, I'm not one of those 'meat is murder' nazis but I've lost 30lbs since going lacto-ovo. I don't need to tell you that every single one of these statements is annoying as fuck, do I? They're annoying as fuck. They're all some form of I have temporarily triumphed over a personal vice and I'm going to enroll you in my experience uninvited. They presume that (A) your problem is universal (B) your solution is universal (C) I am somehow unaware or blind to the miracle of your universal solution to your universal problem. Let's take, for argument's sake, the position that hey holy shit you guyz turns out social media isn't actually emotionally fulfilling ZOMG. Great. You kicked it. Good for you. Except you didn't. You only drink communion wine on Sundays, you totally don't have a problem. You only drink socially when you're supporting other people at the bar, you totally don't have a problem. I mean, that's one thing. You've got like, six paragraphs slagging on everyone that isn't a teetotaler who only drinks when he's chumming around with his vicar. You're in full-on Carrie Nation Demon Rum mode. And look. The only positive press social media has ever gotten was before we all started using it. Fucking You've Got Mail is about how Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan's lives would be better if they'd step away from the keyboard and be human and the world was still on fucking dial-up back then. You've effectively written a social media post saying "social media sucks" which, c'mon, is every fifth post on Twitter and Facebook. But over here, a mile away, at the edge of the barren salted wasteland surrounding the little warehouse, I can make out the flashing lights and discern a low rumble of noise, but ... it's kinda sad ... and oddly quaint ... and more than a little puzzling to me now why people would choose to stand inside that building at all. ...good for you? But the thing you're missing is that the people engaging with social media are getting something out of it. It might not be healthy, it might not be virtuous, it might not come with the special dispensation that it's okay to check Facebook if it's only for Rugby but if people could universally say "yeah I just decided to stop checking Facebook" it'd be in the dustbin beside Friendster and Myspace. So there must be something there other than their lack of virtue. What if they can't get out? These "fucking earnest" people listening to the sound system at 11. What if this is their best life? What if they've tried to get out and failed, or what if they've gotten out and discovered that "the barren salted wasteland" doesn't hit their dopamine receptors the way attention-whoring for Instagram likes does? What if a carefully-constructed social persona is the only thing they have control of? Pretend your diatribe is read by BethAnn McLaughlin. You think she was ever in any position to go "you know, my life would be better off without Twitter, I think I'll get off it?" How much of a wretched shell must your outer life be to construct an inner one so bleak, and then keep coming back for more after it becomes abundantly clear that your every engagement is increasing your peril? I think in your head, goob, you go this isn't a problem for me, I can just stop, therefore the whole world would be better if everyone just stopped. And I think your understanding of the world would increase if you presume that most people have tried the simple solutions, regardless of the problem. "Don't wanna be fat? Eat less" has worked on exactly zero people.And it is funny to me ... there are all these people, in this little warehouse, out in the middle of this field. Inside the warehouse the sound system is blaring pre-recorded messages at volume 11, while people huddle in groups trying to hear with each other, while shouting and throwing rocks at other small groups of huddled people... and they are all so fucking earnest about it...
I hear ya, and that's why I tried to make this entirely about MY experience, and not telling other people what they should or shouldn't do with their social media consumption. I was able to get off the teat when a friend of mine posted something similar in an email chain a group of us have had going for years. I was afraid of being lonely, feeling left out, withdrawal symptoms... whatever. Just afraid of not logging in. And when I realized THAT was my concern - and his experience was an overwhelmingly positive one - that gave me the impetus to try it out. So the idea of my post is inviting other people to examine their social media experience, and see if it parallels mine. And, if so, one possible thing to do if they want to change their social media experience, is to try what I did. I tried really hard not to say, YOU SHOULD DO THIS NOW and instead let it be entirely about my personal experience, in the hopes someone might find some value in that perspective. --- Side note: I bristled when you called Hubski "social media"... that doesn't seem right to me... and I wouldn't put Reddit in that column either. I think it comes down to the infinite scroll. Tools with the infinite scroll; Insta, FB, Twitter, TikTok, etc. My Reddit and Hubski feeds end when I get to yesterday's content. I see what's new, interact with anything interesting, and go away. Infinite scroll is insidious and actually short circuits our brain's higher functions. So I don't put Reddit and Hubski into the "social media" bucket... I think there's still a bucket over in the corner we used to use called "aggregators and commentary". Maybe they fit better in there...