A funny thing happened on the way to the internet. As the world got more and more sucked into social media, I began reading Cal Newport and Alfie Kohn and gradually crawled out of them.
But I’ll confess that I sort of stumbled, kicking and screaming, into SM 1“social media” is hereafter abbreviated “SM”. sobriety. It’s not as if I was ahead of the curve on this one. I had a raging Twitter habit like so many other political wonks. Twitter (pre-Elon) was a great place to get cutting-edge news on politics, mass shootings, environmental catastrophe, social unrest — in other words, when the world was lurching toward chaos. However, the bad far, far outweighs the good on Twitter and elsewhere, particularly post-Elon.
As of late, there has been an interesting backlash against the constant connection 2This is a terrible misnomer, as “connection” implies physical or face-to-face connection with other humans, whereas online “connection” leads one to isolation and lonliness. of the internet and SM. We have seen this the movement promoting the deletion of one’s “socials” (SM accounts), recognizing the toxicity of these platforms.
Well this past year, I finally let my Twitter die. Throughout my old blog archives, you’ll now find broken link after broken link 3some examples: Firebeard, the Phoenix and OS X Mountain Lion and The broken engineering interview process. I’m leaving those up as a little badge of honor, like recovery chips.
We’re even starting to see a movement back toward “dumb” phones. For instance, my wife has fully switched to the Light Phone. I’m still on a smart phone, but I’ve taken a lot of steps built into Android to help rein in its distracting features 4They have an excellent system-wide feature called Digital Wellbeing, as well as setting up Do Not Disturb to auto-enable during work hours.. Cal Newport’s book was instrumental in helping me see the value of restrictive self-monitoring:
I haven’t quite been able to delete my Facebook yet, as its Marketplace actually makes for a better Craigslist alternative. But there’s a great Chrome plugin called FB Purity, which strips out much of the distracting endless scroll nature of Facebook.
If a luddite like me waits long enough, they begin to look like a trendsetter. In that sense, I can ride the wave of the cyclical nature of time (and even in some cases, nostalgic technology). What was once old, becomes new again. Case in point, the medium someone might be reading these words right now.
ElectroLund has been around for 20+ years. I keep thinking I’ll let it go, the way all blogs have. But there’s just too much history here. I met my wife through this blog. And now that I’ve waited long enough, I can claim that I’m just here for the Great Disconnect away from SM.
A nice bonus to sticking around this long is that WordPress continues to see active development for free. It’s latest iteration, known as “Gutenberg”, has really grown on me. It’s really quite powerful and intuitive. For instance, I’ve been able to fundamentally update my theme template without writing a single line of dreaded PHP. And if any form of online writing is going to be sustainable without relying on SM, the tools are going to have to be modern and easy.
So here’s to more writing and less toxic socializing in 2024!
Footnotes
- 1“social media” is hereafter abbreviated “SM”.
- 2This is a terrible misnomer, as “connection” implies physical or face-to-face connection with other humans, whereas online “connection” leads one to isolation and lonliness.
- 3some examples: Firebeard, the Phoenix and OS X Mountain Lion and The broken engineering interview process
- 4They have an excellent system-wide feature called Digital Wellbeing, as well as setting up Do Not Disturb to auto-enable during work hours.
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