My Not So Strange Addiction

Give me the serenity to accept these algorithms I cannot change.

Hi friends!

How’s everyone doing? Based on a casual ethnographic study I conducted yesterday alongside my field team (friends I sent voice notes to) — it seems like all of us are exhausted and most of us have been sleeping like shit. I hate that for us! This is not a time of collective sanity, and swimming against the current of crazy is draining whether you’re getting a good night’s rest or not. Hoping the fall equinox restores some balance today since we are just silly little creatures beholden to the rhythms of the planet, after all, and a return to equanimity feels like a vibe worth wishing for.

I’m currently having my yearly return of the overwhelming desire to throw my phone down a well, hear the delayed splash as it hits the water, then turn around and never look back. This time it’s not just from the never-ending pings and replies that come with having a job and a life, I can’t even watch TV lately without pausing to enter a multi-hour, algorithm-driven fugue state on TikTok and that feels… unwell.

me on literally any day that ends in y

TikTok is my favorite designer drug and I don’t know how to find moderation with something so tailored to my personal likes, tastes, and needs. Opening the app is like entering a portal where disparate fragments come together to engage and entertain better than anything else I have ever experienced and if there is a limit to the scroll, I haven’t found it yet.

The way the TikTok algorithm cooks up a dopamine-fueled feast is unparalleled, but my second favorite feature of the app is how socially acceptable it is to have like 31 followers and never see content from anyone you know. Instead, you see content from people like this, and when you don’t want to see it anymore, you just click on a little button that says “not interested” and your feedback is taken seriously. I know the first step is admitting the problem, but what if I love it too much?

I am always trying to moderate my own phone addiction and I avoided downloading this magnificent app until the bitter end. Last year, after a fortunate series of events I am legally unable to divulge, I didn’t have to professionally consume the internet for the first time in many, many years, and so I took a break from tapping through apocalyptic tweets and everyone’s European vacations and deleted all the social media from my phone. I lasted three months — my brain felt like it had been driven through a car wash and I read nine books.

Of course I had to go back to work eventually and before I knew it, TikTok had me in her clutches. I guess it could have been worse, I was on a job hunt and could have ended up getting really into LinkedIn. The weirdness of the job market and the rise of the LinkedIn influencer has turned that platform into a non-stop nightmare networking event with too many people posting nonsense and no one there to troll them because everyone is trying to be professional and on their best behavior.

Everything is weird and this isn’t the most opportune time for the state of social media to be in shambles, but it makes sense that LinkedIn and TikTok have risen in this moment — our two choices being embrace the nonsense of late-stage capitalism or vibe along with potentially nefarious technology we don’t quite understand.

To my Twitter-heads, I am genuinely so sorry that Elon shattered your crack pipe and I hope you find a new fix soon if that’s what you need. Instagram is now a glorified messaging app with a few niche meme accounts worth staying for, and anyone under 50 only goes on Facebook to buy or sell used furniture. Of course there are other platforms to explore, but like, I don’t want to.

I am historically a bigger fan of leaving the house than I am of staying inside of it and I yearn to be outside, screenless, meeting new people, picking daisies, finding a renewed sense of vibrancy and presence in my daily life. The past few years have left their stain and I don’t think we should feel guilty for escaping into these platforms when couch time comes and everything is still so squirrely, but I also think being unable to watch an episode of reality television (!) without simultaneously flicking through your phone is absolutely a disease.

I guess the only path forward is to try and regain some control over our phones and our lives. I have found that going cold turkey, putting the rectangular menace in another room so I can’t mindlessly scroll and rack up screen time, is the only way to go, at least until Monday when the Slacking begins.

Until then, I’ll just be over here trying my best to reset my attention span, one day at a time.

Less Lessons More Blessin’s™️

Liz