i don't need social media to stay in touch
My friend Ava recently dropped a post are you out of touch?. The gist of the post was a breakdown of Adam Aleksic's quote of saying that quitting or severely reducing social media was equivalent to sticking your head in the sand. With this quote giving me a particularly good chuckle:
Each Reddit argument and YouTube comment war is an epistemic basis for understanding the current state of cultural discourse. If you ignore those, you lose touch with reality as most people experience it.
I have been without social media for over a year at this point. It's telling of someone who is chronically online to think that a youtube/reddit comment war is in any way paramount for understanding the cultural zeitgeist.
I wanted to piggyback off of Ava's post and give my perspective of how I stay informed since quitting social media and daily-driving a dumb phone.
I agree with Ava that the importance of social media for staying informed is largely overrated.
Going back to Aleksic's quote about comment section wars, it's kinda laughable to take comment section arguments seriously. Comment sections are largely bots/trolls posting something inflammatory, people fighting battles of who can be the snarkiest for internet points, and dog-piling people who don't participate in the group think of that particular group/subreddit.
Social Media is not indicative of reality, because most people don't act like how they do on social media. Most people don't comment on social media, especially older generations (Facebook being an exception).
To give an example, if I based my views on American conservatives off of what I've seen on the conservative subreddit. I would think all conservatives were delusional and drinking the pro-Trump kool aid. However, if I go outside, I would see that all of my pro-trump neighbors have taken down their signs and instead going back to the pre-2016 generic freedom/America/God/guns shtick. Going to No Kings I saw plenty of anti-Trump republicans, my best friend's dad being one of them. This perspective would have been lost had I not left social media and chose to look at what is going on outside. There are certainly those nuts that are hell-bent on dying for Daddy Donnie and doing olympic-level mental gymnastics before they ever swallow their pride, but you'd be surprised how much of a minority these people are. There's a reason Trump has continued to lose Republican votes with each election cycle.
Another example, if you based your entire understanding of Atheists off of the infamous r/atheism you'd think atheists were all a bunch of pseudo-intellectual, fedora-wearing, neckbeards. You'd forget that most atheists are just regular people going about their life.
When you base your worldview off of what you see online, you're basing your opinion on people who hold strong enough opinions to go to niche-within-niche spaces. The internet is largely occupied by lurkers.
I stay in touch with the world largely by proxy of the creators I'm subscribed to on Youtube and family. I follow creators that will talk about social media trends, or the current political climate, or hell the news just shows up on the home page of the browser I use at my work.
Social media doesn't simply inform you, it inundates you, constantly. It's not just one article talking about something, it's post after post feeding you the exact same thing.
There was a quote I heard recently that stuck with me "once you've heard the message, hang up the phone".
We don't live in a monolithic society anymore. Everything is a micro-niche now. The latest tik tok trend that seemingly everyone is doing might go unknown to the vast majority of the people online. If you compare whatever trending dance is going on online to when Gagnam Style was popping off, it would be such a stark contrast because everyone knew Gagnam Style, nobody outside of the people who the feed explicitly targeted would see the new trending tiktok dance.
Having been chronically offline for some time now, I don't feel like I'm any less informed now than I was then. Yeah I saw the 24/7 news cycle on my feeds, but at a certain point most of that was just bullshit fluff.
I don't need to see every dipshit thing the current administration is doing. I already know they're already a bunch of pedophiles/pedophile-defenders who want to line their pockets with taxpayer cash and screwing over the working class. I don't need that reminder day after day after day. I got the message, now I have to hang up the phone.
I once heard that people aren't starving for information, they're malnourished. We have an abundance of information being sent to us, but how much of it is actually meaningful in any way? Not much I'd say.
The internet isn't what it used to be. Where it didn't matter what circle you were in, you were at least familiar with the big memes at the time, and those memes stayed popular for months if not years. The older you get the less "hip" you become. That's natural. You have a job, kids to raise, and bills to pay.
I grew up in a time where the popular memes were found in every corner and in every niche. Bad Luck Brian, Rage comics, hell everyone and their dementia-riddled grandma knew about Grumpy Cat.
We still have some big memes like Wojack or Skibidi Toilet, but they're far from how popular the most popular memes used to be back in the day.
Where the fuck am I going with this? I don't know, the HMS Pirate's Consciousness hit an iceberg and sank to the bottom of the Atlantic.
Anyway, I guess it's a really roundabout way of saying it, but you don't need the internet to stay informed. You just gotta be able to listen out in real life. That is the most indicative of what is REALLY going on. If people are talking about these things IRL, then it actually managed to transcend algorithms. Keep that in mind, and go touch some grass... especially you, Alex.
Reply via email: me@absurdpirate.com
as of writing this...
I'm working from home. Been playing Ocarina of Time on my N64 and have gotten pretty far. Trying to find enough skulltulas to get the wallet upgrade to get the Zora armor. I'm understanding why this game is considered one of the best of all time. Despite it's age, there's so much stuff in it and so much to do. Side tasks actually mean something, the story is simple but engaging, the music is catchy, and the exploration is still plentiful. I've been making great headway beating games. Finally beat Portal 2 after first starting the single-player in 2014. Been playing the Restoration Mod for Payday 2 which brings back that feel that 2013 Payday 2 had with a lot of QoL balancing that makes the game feel fresh.