First, getting free of social media content isn’t easy-
- and completely leaving it is probably not the best idea in a culture where bits and pieces of what’s out there can be important, and buried in some thread of rants and irrational expression.
Staying “ALL IN” is toxic. It will eventually hurt you.
This article is not about a quick-disconnect remedy. That’s always a possibility. You can simply say, “Close my account.” Easy peasy. Just leave. Many users come back under a pseudonym.
You can also get banned from your social media connection. Just go join another! If you are a person who needs to flock to the cause, then maybe that’s the right thing for you to do.
If you believe you already have THE answer, then this article won’t give you something you missed out on. I thought I had the answer any number of times, but I chose to believe that my voice was important in the conversations. So I stayed, probably much longer than I should have. I tried to be a voice of reason, a sane perspective. I’m not very good at textual shouting. I don’t have the gift of perpetual outrage over every thing that causes me insult or injury. It got exhausting and ate into my personal life. That’s not a good feeling, and not a good place to be living.
Next, a little perspective —
Where the concept began and where it is now are at opposite ends of the spectrum. Three billion users, or, a number representing thirty-eight per cent of the world’s total population, are registered on Facebook. Just guessing, but I suspect many of those users are duplicates or replicons.
That’s a lot of electronic energy.
Thinking of the amount of fuel it takes to power the data centers that keep Meta, X, Tik Tok and all the other metadata search engines running is — a bit overwhelming.
And at this point, it is a stagnation. The point of an online social voice is muddled by the presence of half-truths, lies, bots, malware and entities just there to capture your personal data and money.
Chris Hayes’ new book, The Siren’s Call, looks at the deficit in human capacity that these social networks and metadata-AI mechanisms are causing.
We are moving toward an over reliance on a few to guide the many, and we have leaned toward sociopathy and acrimony instead of decency. That’s not where social media networks began.
Social media platforms today are a modern version of the Roman Coliseum, a place where lethal cybernetic warfare, mock battles, crowd assassinations take place. It is a thing that feeds on itself and nourishes with a stream of agitation and angry impulses.
long ago, it seemed like a good idea -
- Joining a network of people who would share views, experiences, current happenings in their lives, getting caught up on old friends, having virtual reunions, was the allure.
It was a hopeful adventure, and we would all begin it together, and we would respect one another, give audience, allow for our differences.
Social media still holds a promise for a way to reach out to friends, family, people within various groups who have like-minded interests — pets, fishing, embroidery, flying, collecting, whatever-you-have-it. But by its very construct, it also holds a terrible threat:
It has evolved to where it Tracks its users, corrals them into categories, determines the threat level they pose and attempts to ISOLATE OR eliminate them, at least, electronically.
When I joined Facebook many years ago, it was about communication with many of my friends from work, and after retirement, it was a way to keep up with their activities. It was also a way to learn about old school chums and what’s become of them. Some have used Facebook as their platform for their professional activities.
Facebook and Meta have become much less that and more about not letting people have genuine conversations. It is a place for rants and either fully psychotic or distorted thoughts to be expressed.
Perhaps, some folks find that ranting therapeutic.
It isn’t.
What users do when they either post or re-post is inform an algorithm that then attempts to keep presenting you with a narcissistic mirror. You enter into a toxic relationship with a machine. Anyone familiar with mythology knows that Narcissus drowned trying to kiss his own reflection. The machine will keep trying to isolate you, in much the same way an addictive drug will keep pulling you back in.
On October first of last year, I decided to post the following, and attempt a harm reduction for myself:
To all my friends: I am so sorry to tell you this. I will be leaving Facebook and the Meta Universe. If you know me, we'll talk soon, if not, it was very nice talking with all of you. Twice now, Facebook and Meta have challenged me and suspended my account, then inappropriately gathered information. That says, I don't need this. Peace everyone, it's been a slice!! Until we meet again…
Was it hard to do? Yes. Stepping away from anything you once believed was a good thing is very hard.
Was there evidence of AI-slopping, receiving things that would keep me agitated and ready to repeat the adverse comments others were posting? Yes.
I call it harm reduction, not Cold Turkey, to walk away from something that began taking on a life of its own, and like many, I thought “My Page” was truly mine. It isn’t. Yes, I was naive.
Is social media addictive? Not specifically, but for people trying to change the way they feel by entering a cybernetic sorting hat, it becomes that. just like getting high, users have no idea that their tolerance is increasing. They’ll also go through withdrawal when they quit. I did.
My account still exists. I periodically look at it, but instead of a daily reference (at my worst, I was on it more than twice a day), I look about once a week, and I “doomscroll” only when —
HUNGRY
ANGRY
LONELY
TIRED
Folks who use, or drink, or smoke, or are in recovery, will recognize “HALT” — an acronym used in many recovery oriented systems of care. Four very common, simple, and shared triggers for picking up. The doomscrolling is getting better. That means, I’m less anxious, less concerned, less in need of a “Facebook Fix.”
As with any attempt to make changes in a life, we all have the Siren’s Song that calls us back, beckons us to keep using, keep scrolling, keep gambling, keep pushing ourselves to the point of exhaustion. Recovering from donating many hours of a life to a generative, compulsive, narcissistic pursuit is not easy to do.
For comparison, when I completely quit smoking in my late 20’s, it was hard. Quitting this FB habituation/compulsion/addiction turned out to be no different a wrestling match. Although I was no longer buying or bumming a smoke from others back then, I would stand in the smoking section and talk with acquaintances and those who had yet to give up the practice. My sister and mother smoked, and they did so even though both had respiratory disease. My father-in-law also smoked, and it turned out to be his undoing as well. Family history wasn’t on my side in my effort to quit. All those same emotions have bubbled back forward in this effort to make a positive change in how I receive life. But at this point, I no longer have the pangs and urge to pick up a cigarette, cigar or any form of tobacco. It has been at least 40 years since taking a puff, and about 30 since I last felt the need to be in a room where second-hand smoke was available.
You stay adjacent to your addictions, hoping that things will turn out differently for others, while always knowing the truth that they won’t.
I hope that my choice to put down the compulsion to chat with others in a forum or “competitive rant” will stick in the same way. October seems at this point so far off, but as with anyone trying to change and kick a tough habit, I take my successes one day at a time.
The effects of the toxicity are dissipating. I have more energy, but also, I am more aware of how tired I become as the day ends. Other activities are no longer subordinated to either reading, posting or re-posting. There’s much less of an anger impulse. Except for driving. Too many other drivers are stupid idiots!! But that’s another story for another day...
Today was a good day. I’ll take it.
I am hopeful about tomorrow as well...
HOW DO WE BEGIN RECOVERING?
We have to admit that there’s a problem. If we can’t own it, we can’t name it or claim it.
We might need others to intervene. Sometimes, it is the machine that says, “You need to stop.”
Making “promises” doesn’t work. Making choices, and daily deciding to step away from what ails you, works slowly, but surely. Lots of thoughts and feelings will pour in as you make your choices.
Work in small groups, with real friends you know, in real conversations. Stay eyes up, not heads-down in the phone. Meet people where they are. Odds are, they’re struggling with something, too. Be real, be in context with the world that your eyes and ears show you. You don’t need virtual filtration for it.
Accept that this is overwhelming. Three billion users is a massive amount of competition for getting heard. The only thing actually listening to you is a mind-trap, intended to further isolate you. When I realized that no one was listening and everyone was keystroking, and that nobody was telling a meaningful story, just throwing as much dirt at one another as possible, the “overwhelm” that I had been ignoring became obvious.
Have unimportant conversations with people you meet. I began my mild extroversion by doing “something nice” — offering a genuine smile to strangers, talking about the weather, laughing at a corny joke. Just saying thank you to the person who bags your groceries feels weird at first, but “fake it until you make it.” Break out of the techno-glow allure of the phone or tablet. Make eye contact.
Continue engaging in “small talk.” It isn’t looking for either agreement or argument, but just being normative, breaking the ice, cutting through normal anxieties. The “Face-Down Freddies,”, no longer interested in actually being present with another person, need to be encouraged to engage. Help them out. Get them to raise their eyes and acknowledge that there’s a world that’s real and alive, and even though there are threats, there’s a lot of good things that they are missing.
We share a smile, we watch out for ourselves and others, we concern ourselves with safety.
We live in a real way, and if you are like me, discover other ways to say what you have to say, tell your own story, tell it to those who might listen or be interested. Writing items here at Daily Kos is invaluable. For authors and writer hopefuls, whatever you are doing to put thought and feeling into words and imagery that we all can consider is important. Keep expressing, whatever your site, wherever you blog, however you came up with your substack.
Mixing of old publication methods and new ones is another way we can communicate with one another. Keep reading books. Go to the library, the bookstore, set up a couple of shelves in your home. Keeping books is as important as reading them or writing about them. Every book you have is representative of people, places and things you knew either nothing about or very little about...
… Even the negative stories. We need to know about them, even if we don’t want to live with the people who wrote the dangerous and difficult ideas down, or see those morbid ideas become reality.
We’re on a dangerous course as a living thing.
The phone has become a place to relieve anxiety about being in touch with another human. The cybernetic control this exerts over all humans isn’t immediately evident, but if this is the direction we’re spiralling toward, the species is in trouble. Biological creatures don’t do well, evolutionarily speaking, if they don’t develop real bonds outside the realm of a technology link.
Phone-dwellers, quit hiding! You need to stop telling yourselves that you are “aware” of the world around you. It all comes at us pretty fast, and heads-down navigating at crosswalks, intersections, crowded sidewalks and busy marketplaces. Being “on-the-phone-shopping” isn’t cool, or trending or the thing to do. It is annoying. Also — quit texting while driving.
Our survival as a living thing depends on moving away from the reliance on virtual reality, AI direction, electronic everything everywhere all the time. Reality shouldn’t be just for vacations, special occasions, it should be as basic as breathing, walking, seeing and hearing.
SUMMARY:
Before there was an internet, cellular technology, an emoticon dictionary, and a host of other little features that tell us we’ve been “liked,” we had friends. We had family. We had people we could spend time with and trust that they would accept us and not judge us.
This is not the first time our culture has broken into factions that fight.
This is not the first time civilization seemed to be in utter peril.
This is not the first time this planet has undergone induced atmospheric change, both in the air and in the water. AI gives an accounting of “epochal cataclysms” that cannot be re-posted here, but it is worth your examination. We’re currently in the Holocene Extinction ( en.wikipedia.org/...).
But for anyone alive right now, it IS the first time any of this has happened all at once, and with such alarming speed of development. It is overwhelming and frightening. It can be very depressing.
It IS the first window of technological capability that has brought so many voices together, and made so many minds simultaneously susceptible to toxic ideas.
Read, write, find ways to keep your voice heard, and remain alive. Getting lost in the chatter that is our national “waste-of-time” pastime doesn’t have to be your only way to get noticed.
Remember, you always have a choice. Don’t “opt-out” on that.
Stay hopeful. I am.
