Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat – the zoomer to boomer playgrounds freshly tilled and kindly bestowed to us by rich businessmen and their acres and acres of sweet server farmland. Increased communication has been and will continue to be the driving force for civilization, yet I’ve chosen to go off the deep end – well, not completely. The thirty day repent period that based Z u c c gives you after deactivating has finally elapsed, so as of today, the only account I hold in a centralized media platform is Reddit, which is serving as a nicotine patch for dank may-mays. Why don’t I have any social media accounts? After some thought, here are some patterns I’ve noticed that even the most avid of you users should relate to.
- Daily life is not worth sharing
Raw thought and raw life are pretty boring. People are not as interesting spontaneously as they’d like to think, myself included, and if I wanted to mull over and outline/edit, I might as well share it with the world anonymously and have the idea speak for itself – as in a meme, a photo, or even (gasp) a blog post. On the same note, I’ve found myself not caring in the slightest about even my closest friends’ feeds, so flipping that around and recognizing that my friend group shares my taste in content, why would they even care about my feed?
- Redundancy
If I really cared about a person, I’d have their number and set aside time to seek them out. In addition, everything I’d read about my friends and every meme worth my time would find its way into my life through a close friend or Reddit anyway, eliminating FOMO.
- Keeping acquaintances and friends distinct
Knowing people on a small talk or favor asking basis is enough for me.
- Algorithms suck
They think I’m a 16 year old girl in disguise, and while I appreciate the roast, I ended up feeling condescended to every time I open up an app.
- Being edgy and different
There’s a juvenile delusional shimmer to going against the gradient and not feeding the machine, running the hamster wheel, or any other cliche lampooned by punk artists 40 years ago.
- Part of my identity
The lack of social media itself is a personality trait, a starting point for conversations, and at one point with a female classmate, even a common bond.
- What a bother
I’ve always inclined myself towards minimalism and have repeatedly quit and rejoined Facebook and Instagram in pursuit of the ultimate digital detox. What would end up forming is a cycle of creating an account in hopes of deepening my connections or tuning in to a specific event, not using said account for months at a time, and eventually wanting to downsize and have less mental tabs to keep track of.
- I don’t want to keep up with the Joneses
Having personal feeds to scroll through exacerbates the tendency to compare oneself to others and shame myself for being unconventional in any minor way and not fitting the media narrative.
- Keeps anxiety at bay
Not having these platforms accessible keeps me from humoring anxiety and stalking old and new friends alike. That’s valuable time that I could be spending doing absolutely nothing to reconnect /s
- Privacy and Manipulation
I feel queasy about black box computer algorithms spoon-feeding me curated content designed to keep me and specifically me hooked for as long as possible. I understand that businesses have to make their earnings somehow, and accept the role that advertising plays in this goal. However, I draw the line when this correspondence stops being one sided. There’s no reason I have to be a part of this user data economy; just serve me some generic ads that don’t require my input.
There is certainly merit in embracing new technology, and the more personal points could be remedied with mindfulness, but this post is meant to serve as a time capsule for the up and coming alpha generation on how someone in 2021 achieved equilibrium.