One of the grossest terms ever coined is “content creator”. I can’t help but get the feeling that “content” is meant to be consumed, on to the next thing as soon as it’s finished. “Content” is cheap filler, thrown together with the cheapest ingredients, corn syrup-sweetened, and dyed to look like the real thing. Increasingly, our online spaces are inundated with highly-palatable, content-free “content”.
Like Fruity Pebbles, I can get through the whole box before realizing I’m still hungry. My mind craves real connections, and consuming content is never going to scratch that itch. That empty feeling I get when I look up from the screen is indicative of a need that’s going unfilled while I’m cramming myself full of empty calories.
For almost the entirety of human history, all of my interactions would’ve been with people I knew personally, the same 100 or fewer people I’d known all my life. Early in the days of social media, online interactions had the potential to follow the same path. Your Facebook feed showed only those you had chosen to be “Friends” with and you sought out the forums you were interested in. But attention can be monetized, and where there’s money to be made, someone will choose to make it, no matter the human suffering it creates.
Now, do I think Zuck and his peers purposefully chose to make their platforms both addictive and depressing? No, I think they only cared about it being addictive and depressing was an unfortunate byproduct. I do, however, blame them for continuing down the path when the negative effects were made clear to them. But as old pal Upton Sinclair said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
So, if the platforms aren’t going to get any better, I have to take things into my own hands.
For one, I no longer have any social media apps on my phone. While there are some great things about being able to connect with people from all over the globe, I know my monkey brain wasn’t meant to be blasted with the worst (and therefore most engaging) news every day, all day long. I still have the accounts because, like I’ve said before, I can still see the glimmer of good in social media. I’ll just have to log onto the web version on the laptop.
The laptop, a 2020 MacBook Air has been on the fritz (a topic for another day) and the replacement is going to be a Mac Mini - don’t get mad at me, I’m stuck in the ecosystem, I can only fight the man a little at a time.
When the iPhone goes, it might be gone forever, replaced by a flip phone, a nice camera, and getting lost sometimes.