Great book. I've read it a couple of times now but a re-read would be good. I'm now permanently banned from fb and twitter (don't know why; maybe just Divine providence.) I'm thinking it's beyond social media, it's the device itself. I'm considering putting my device in a drawer, only to be used for travel. Replace all the useful functions with inconvenient analogs. Alarm clock, record player, camera etc. I think this may be the only way for me.
I've been having these thoughts about social media for about a dozen years. In my case, the first corrosive effects (and colonizing--I specifically remember that same word occurring to me) were not that I noticed myself framing moments for posts/tweets but in imagining the reactions, which would so often be combative to what I felt were even the most anodyne posts ("if I mention enjoying this film, someone will be along to lecture me on how the director is, in their opinion, a monster; if I mention travel, someone will want to know how I can dare to think of something so frivolous as we are now living through what are, in their estimation, the worst times in all of human history"). It started to sap my enjoyment even of things I kept entirely offline because I could still imagine people moaning at me. I also began to notice and still do that the people who seem to use it most incessantly also seem to be perpetually miserable, depressed, and angry . I deleted my Twitter account around 2019 and Facebook the following year; I have another Facebook account now but I rarely use it.
I do, however, have an Instagram account, and I have to say it has brought me nothing but joy for more than a decade. I wonder if it's some combination of the fact that I've curated my feed so perfectly, that I follow so few people that I actually know IRL, that I rarely post myself and mostly only look at others' posts (although this isn't helpful with other forms of social media), or some combination of all three. It's also the only social media I've ever joined because there was something I specifically wanted to follow on there, as opposed to being nagged by a friend to join. (Now when friends nag me to join a new social media site I just politely say things like "mmm hmm.")
I do think that largely, social media horrifically flattens us as people. We are all so much more than our worst opinions and worst behaviors, which seem so prevalent on social media. I liken it to road rage, where somehow other drivers become less than human when we're all locked in our little mechanical worlds (perhaps relatedly, I loathe driving and would happily never get behind the wheel of a car again if I could).
My periods of feeling mildly addicted to Twitter/Facebook/doomscrolling are so far in the past I had actually forgotten I even struggled with it at one point until I started writing this comment. And I'd be lying if I said I got no benefits from social media--even life-changing, as it's been the basis for building several very close real-life relationships. But despite that, I think the world and most of our lives would all be vastly improved if we woke up tomorrow and social media had vanished.
I know exactly what you mean, Lynda, about hearing and noticing your own thoughts running rampant with a kind of self-propelled energetic dialogue in response to things on social media. How cool, though, that you've been able to use Instagram so well. I share your speculation and fantasy about a world made better by the disappearance of all these things. Then I think, "Well, what's ultimately and absolutely 'better'?"
I’ve had the realization that attention is all we have. It is our life energy. Every moment we must decide where we gift our attention. It gives that energy to the things we “spend” it on. Some things give energy back to us, most famously, nature. Some things, like social media, just suck that energy away to give themselves life. Thinking about it this way has helped me see how precious our attention is and helped me consciously decide where to place it. Consequently I have lost the true desire to engage on any of these platforms. I still feel the addiction, the pull, but then……simply dismiss it. The few times I give in I immediately notice that there’s nothing there for me. It’s just…boring. I don’t use any platforms anymore except Substack. And even on Substack I rarely look at Notes. I open it and maybe look at the top ten posts in my feed, usually seeing you and a couple of others but within five minutes I’m done. What I AM addicted to is long form reading. I spend hours reading essays and books. Sure, it’s a much healthier addiction, but sometimes I wonder if I need to let it go to some degree too.
Strong resonances here, Clint. The recognition of attention as something that we invest, and that we should invest wisely because it's sacred, it strong here.
I will add that meditation helps to break such addictions. Sure, social media provides a dopamine hit. But that’s literally nothing compared to the bliss state of a meditative absorption such as entering jhana. Meditation also helps one to clearly see what is driving their programming and to start releasing those compulsions.
of course it can. we just have to do a bunch of things and diversify it and break up corporate control. there are already pockets of "social media" that are great, but you have to find them and what works for your neural type. for example, i created a separate instagram account which is only to follow illustrators. it works.
I currently have two social media platforms. facebook and - "blue-something"... I can't recall if it's blue-star or blue-bird or something else, which shows how much I actually used it. I chose it to display my paintings and "connect" with the art's community. Previously I had an Instagram account which I hurriedly deleted after blundering into a human "community" I found very scary. The debacle began with young photos of young woman showing at first bare breasts, and finally one of a gaping vagina. I must have early-on clicked on something the algorithms read as a desire to hook-up with young woman - being a senior Gay male, I can't figure out how that occurred. But this wasn't the scary part. I must have looked at some humorous posts at some point....( wildly veering away from the art's community )....and I watched a clip from TV's "The Beverly Hillbillies" where I commented..."these were the days Republicans were more hospitable". I thought I was being humorous. What followed was a tsunami of hate replies ! Even someone who visited my homepage to say I was a shitty artist loser ! Talk about blundering into a field of land mines !
So far like yourself, my Facebook account is still active....but I wrestle with dumping it as well. I am aware of my unfortunate addiction to performative behaviour. I've lately been attempting to use it to generate conversations around subjective things such as dreams, or ways to upend one's certainty about anything. Generally all I receive back from these attempts are thumbs-up emogees or maybe a sentence or two in the comments. Lately I've succumbed to posting some photos of my Cat or a favourite house-plant....shots of snow on my front lawn...etc.
I no longer spend time painting - mostly doom scrolling what little free time I have. I think I need an intervention.
I don't know if I can intervene from this position and in this mode, but if so, consider my post an intervention. It sounds like you've definitely had your share of encounters with social media's starkly difficult side. Maybe we just need -- and by "we" I definitely include me -- to let ourselves give it up altogether.
Thank you, Matt ! I can already feel those sticky tendrils slowly releasing their stranglehold ! I have a number of great reads ahead - catching up on your posts!
I've been wrestling with this for a while. As a writer, it seems the socials are the primary tool for promoting my work. I'd like to be like Wendell Berry and eschew it, but is it possible to build up something like that now? I suppose it must be, but even publishers don't really seem to think so. I'm trying to use it as a tool, and as a way to remain in contact with other writers and artists that have become friends but live in far away places. I also really love to see the things friends who are visual artists create and share. I thought I could find a medium in there somewhere, but when I saw videos of two murders within days, without warning or a means of avoiding them, I struggle even more to believe the costs are worth whatever good might be gained.
I'm trying a few more ways to approach, which includes limiting daily usage to 30 minutes across my four platforms (twitter, facebook, instagram, and substack.) ((For substack, the notes feed is basically just a more literary focused twitter. Slightly nicer, but still trends more toward the negative as time goes on. The actual stacks that I read come to my inbox and I can avoid the distraction and noise.)) So far, it keeps things a little more focused and actually fun, since I actively look for and engage with what I want instead of the distracted scrolling. But I'm still not entirely convinced even this will work out long term.
It's definitely a complicated question, isn't it, Liv? It sounds like your experimentation is careful and deliberate and born of long and sometimes unpleasant experience. Maybe a person can indeed become Wendell Berry today, only in a way that’s so different in its specifics that it looks nothing like his career. Does that sound nonsensical? Maybe it is. I'm just thinking of the benefits of defining success on one's own terms and therefore being able to freely choose the route and means by which one works toward it. Maybe social media are needed and/or helpful for working toward some people's personal definition of success while remaining completely unnecessary or even counterproductive for others. Maybe this very principle might, for some of us, factor into how we define success. Almost like a play on the fast food worker’s question to customers: Do you want social media with that?
No.
Simple, clean, easy answer. I like it. 😊
I read the title and thought, “Finally! A question I know the answer to!”
Great book. I've read it a couple of times now but a re-read would be good. I'm now permanently banned from fb and twitter (don't know why; maybe just Divine providence.) I'm thinking it's beyond social media, it's the device itself. I'm considering putting my device in a drawer, only to be used for travel. Replace all the useful functions with inconvenient analogs. Alarm clock, record player, camera etc. I think this may be the only way for me.
I know what you mean. The hardware itself, combined with the system it's linked to, may be part of the problem.
I've been having these thoughts about social media for about a dozen years. In my case, the first corrosive effects (and colonizing--I specifically remember that same word occurring to me) were not that I noticed myself framing moments for posts/tweets but in imagining the reactions, which would so often be combative to what I felt were even the most anodyne posts ("if I mention enjoying this film, someone will be along to lecture me on how the director is, in their opinion, a monster; if I mention travel, someone will want to know how I can dare to think of something so frivolous as we are now living through what are, in their estimation, the worst times in all of human history"). It started to sap my enjoyment even of things I kept entirely offline because I could still imagine people moaning at me. I also began to notice and still do that the people who seem to use it most incessantly also seem to be perpetually miserable, depressed, and angry . I deleted my Twitter account around 2019 and Facebook the following year; I have another Facebook account now but I rarely use it.
I do, however, have an Instagram account, and I have to say it has brought me nothing but joy for more than a decade. I wonder if it's some combination of the fact that I've curated my feed so perfectly, that I follow so few people that I actually know IRL, that I rarely post myself and mostly only look at others' posts (although this isn't helpful with other forms of social media), or some combination of all three. It's also the only social media I've ever joined because there was something I specifically wanted to follow on there, as opposed to being nagged by a friend to join. (Now when friends nag me to join a new social media site I just politely say things like "mmm hmm.")
I do think that largely, social media horrifically flattens us as people. We are all so much more than our worst opinions and worst behaviors, which seem so prevalent on social media. I liken it to road rage, where somehow other drivers become less than human when we're all locked in our little mechanical worlds (perhaps relatedly, I loathe driving and would happily never get behind the wheel of a car again if I could).
My periods of feeling mildly addicted to Twitter/Facebook/doomscrolling are so far in the past I had actually forgotten I even struggled with it at one point until I started writing this comment. And I'd be lying if I said I got no benefits from social media--even life-changing, as it's been the basis for building several very close real-life relationships. But despite that, I think the world and most of our lives would all be vastly improved if we woke up tomorrow and social media had vanished.
I know exactly what you mean, Lynda, about hearing and noticing your own thoughts running rampant with a kind of self-propelled energetic dialogue in response to things on social media. How cool, though, that you've been able to use Instagram so well. I share your speculation and fantasy about a world made better by the disappearance of all these things. Then I think, "Well, what's ultimately and absolutely 'better'?"
I’ve had the realization that attention is all we have. It is our life energy. Every moment we must decide where we gift our attention. It gives that energy to the things we “spend” it on. Some things give energy back to us, most famously, nature. Some things, like social media, just suck that energy away to give themselves life. Thinking about it this way has helped me see how precious our attention is and helped me consciously decide where to place it. Consequently I have lost the true desire to engage on any of these platforms. I still feel the addiction, the pull, but then……simply dismiss it. The few times I give in I immediately notice that there’s nothing there for me. It’s just…boring. I don’t use any platforms anymore except Substack. And even on Substack I rarely look at Notes. I open it and maybe look at the top ten posts in my feed, usually seeing you and a couple of others but within five minutes I’m done. What I AM addicted to is long form reading. I spend hours reading essays and books. Sure, it’s a much healthier addiction, but sometimes I wonder if I need to let it go to some degree too.
Strong resonances here, Clint. The recognition of attention as something that we invest, and that we should invest wisely because it's sacred, it strong here.
I will add that meditation helps to break such addictions. Sure, social media provides a dopamine hit. But that’s literally nothing compared to the bliss state of a meditative absorption such as entering jhana. Meditation also helps one to clearly see what is driving their programming and to start releasing those compulsions.
I've found meditation useful as well. And have been interested to find that it gains energy from being interspersed with periods of dispersion.
of course it can. we just have to do a bunch of things and diversify it and break up corporate control. there are already pockets of "social media" that are great, but you have to find them and what works for your neural type. for example, i created a separate instagram account which is only to follow illustrators. it works.
Smart approach with Instragram, that.
I currently have two social media platforms. facebook and - "blue-something"... I can't recall if it's blue-star or blue-bird or something else, which shows how much I actually used it. I chose it to display my paintings and "connect" with the art's community. Previously I had an Instagram account which I hurriedly deleted after blundering into a human "community" I found very scary. The debacle began with young photos of young woman showing at first bare breasts, and finally one of a gaping vagina. I must have early-on clicked on something the algorithms read as a desire to hook-up with young woman - being a senior Gay male, I can't figure out how that occurred. But this wasn't the scary part. I must have looked at some humorous posts at some point....( wildly veering away from the art's community )....and I watched a clip from TV's "The Beverly Hillbillies" where I commented..."these were the days Republicans were more hospitable". I thought I was being humorous. What followed was a tsunami of hate replies ! Even someone who visited my homepage to say I was a shitty artist loser ! Talk about blundering into a field of land mines !
So far like yourself, my Facebook account is still active....but I wrestle with dumping it as well. I am aware of my unfortunate addiction to performative behaviour. I've lately been attempting to use it to generate conversations around subjective things such as dreams, or ways to upend one's certainty about anything. Generally all I receive back from these attempts are thumbs-up emogees or maybe a sentence or two in the comments. Lately I've succumbed to posting some photos of my Cat or a favourite house-plant....shots of snow on my front lawn...etc.
I no longer spend time painting - mostly doom scrolling what little free time I have. I think I need an intervention.
I don't know if I can intervene from this position and in this mode, but if so, consider my post an intervention. It sounds like you've definitely had your share of encounters with social media's starkly difficult side. Maybe we just need -- and by "we" I definitely include me -- to let ourselves give it up altogether.
Thank you, Matt ! I can already feel those sticky tendrils slowly releasing their stranglehold ! I have a number of great reads ahead - catching up on your posts!
I've been wrestling with this for a while. As a writer, it seems the socials are the primary tool for promoting my work. I'd like to be like Wendell Berry and eschew it, but is it possible to build up something like that now? I suppose it must be, but even publishers don't really seem to think so. I'm trying to use it as a tool, and as a way to remain in contact with other writers and artists that have become friends but live in far away places. I also really love to see the things friends who are visual artists create and share. I thought I could find a medium in there somewhere, but when I saw videos of two murders within days, without warning or a means of avoiding them, I struggle even more to believe the costs are worth whatever good might be gained.
I'm trying a few more ways to approach, which includes limiting daily usage to 30 minutes across my four platforms (twitter, facebook, instagram, and substack.) ((For substack, the notes feed is basically just a more literary focused twitter. Slightly nicer, but still trends more toward the negative as time goes on. The actual stacks that I read come to my inbox and I can avoid the distraction and noise.)) So far, it keeps things a little more focused and actually fun, since I actively look for and engage with what I want instead of the distracted scrolling. But I'm still not entirely convinced even this will work out long term.
It's definitely a complicated question, isn't it, Liv? It sounds like your experimentation is careful and deliberate and born of long and sometimes unpleasant experience. Maybe a person can indeed become Wendell Berry today, only in a way that’s so different in its specifics that it looks nothing like his career. Does that sound nonsensical? Maybe it is. I'm just thinking of the benefits of defining success on one's own terms and therefore being able to freely choose the route and means by which one works toward it. Maybe social media are needed and/or helpful for working toward some people's personal definition of success while remaining completely unnecessary or even counterproductive for others. Maybe this very principle might, for some of us, factor into how we define success. Almost like a play on the fast food worker’s question to customers: Do you want social media with that?