Going #Offline
(originally published 2022)
Silence. Space. Breathing. Oxygen. Peace.
That’s how I feel after going #offline. It has been over a year since I read the news (local or international) and almost half a year since I quit using mainstream social media, particularly Facebook and Instagram.
Being on the social media highway was like having my mouth open behind a car’s muffler. In these apps, all the sadness, joy, beauty, hate, love, wars, and lies of the world are compressed into a single feed that is created by a wide range of people, from friends and family to distant connections, influencers, celebrities and even strangers who follow one another. It is impersonally personal, loud, fast, and a modern-day obligation of those riding the wave of progress. I played the game, but it never felt right.
Only a few hours after committing to quit, I began to feel all this space open up in my mind. My need for it was more significant than I realized; it exceeded my expectations. I thought I was making a significant sacrifice. But in reality, I was being set free from a prison of my own making.
I’m still here. I didn’t abandon society; I still have a phone and email. I’m not trying to be a digital hermit but I am re-adjusting, balancing and attuning my digital lifestyle.
It wasn’t evident to me, but social media was causing me indirect pain like something was off. Anxiety has been a passenger inside me for quite some time. I’m not sure who invited it or why, but I spent a lot of time pretending it wasn’t there. I couldn’t see where it was coming from because it was so close — so in front of my eyes. I was playing in a race I really didn’t want to be in.
The things that give me peace I keep close to me, and the things that don’t, I politely return to the universe. I’m dancing it out. I’m surfing the wave. Our feelings contain a lot of information that can help our decision-making, like a thread that comes straight from the depths of our souls.
Disconnecting myself from the main information pipeline was aggressive and impulsive. It’s both a positive personal decision and an experiment in neo-human behavior. The task wasn’t easy and required a lot of energy. Doubts arise like dragons in your head when you’re swimming against the current of the river. Is this the right course of action? Is it excessive? Can we return if we leave and come back? What if I never return? Will friendships will be lost? Is my business going to stop working? Considering I sell coffee online, going quiet felt like corporate suicide.
Connections have been digitized, and human love is now intertwined through cables, metals, and satellites into a ‘social network.’ Our digital lives have become so intertwined with our physical lives that it’s almost impossible to differentiate between them anymore. Our way of connecting is disconnecting.
Take a look at the simple ‘like.’ It seems innocent, but it is not. In the offline world, we used to be able to like things privately. Nowadays, each like is akin to planting a flag about you so everyone can see what you approve (or not). What you like identifies you, and it’s become an invisible transactional unit of energy. Anything we like has been turned into a mini-public statement from which only social media companies benefit. People suffer when they don’t get liked, and silence can say so much if your friends don’t like what you posted.
Making the machine responsible for maintaining your personal connections weakens them. Instead of looking at our hearts when we think of someone, we open the app and find out how they are doing. We lose practice with reality for the sake of playing the game and amassing numbers of likes and followers. A human social network is the real deal. It runs on feelings, not advertising. Remembering people and reaching out to them keeps the strings of the relationship in shape and tuned.
The conversation has become a gigantic breakdancing circle, only that instead of taking a turn, everyone is dancing simultaneously. bumping into each other, in a fast-moving mosh pit while corporations giggle their tin cups on the side with megaphiones asking for money.
We used to have to carry our own hearts, our own feelings. Now the social media revolution makes you outsource the upkeep of love and friendship to the machine’s algorithm. It reminds us of everyone’s birthdays, photos we took together in the past, and their accomplishments, so we don’t have to think about anything or check in on your friends. It does that so you can keep getting deeper into the addiction. It’s a brilliant ploy, all done under the idea of helping you connect with more people. I know that when you are looking into your device, ideas and pictures are moving about, but if you were to imagine those images were off and your screen was black, all you would see is a human staring down and fiddling with a black screen all day long.
The ‘attention economy’ has a poor exchange rate. You have to pay not only with all your personal information but also with an eternal obligation to update everyone on everything you do, think, and experience as you eat a long sandwich of ads. The whole thing is a treadmill you are running on with no way out.
But there is a way out. To step to the side, and opt out. At least for a while. Maybe more sensible ways of communicating will come. Or maybe we’ll have to search toward the past for vintage ways of connecting. Life is now and anything that leaks time and energy from this golden chest should be invited to leave this party.
My psychological well-being is much improved as a result of my decision. My brain felt like it had been given a long warm bath to remove the grime. Life now moves at a much slower pace for me. Things are better. My phone is quiet, like my days, and I’ve slowly begun rebuilding my relationship circle manually. Dropping the noise of news and media has created a great deal of space in my mind and spirit.
Instead of posting photos of my days to hundreds of strangers, I send a few photos when I feel like it to friends that I feel like showing them too, individually. That way, even if we don’t talk, they know I’m thinking of them and sharing a little thing I saw. I’m investing in the relationship, and that investment is like throwing a log in the fires of love. It’s still moving through technology, but it’s personal and doesn’t involve advertisers, social media giants, or other people.
The white page has been a chance to rebuild my tribe from the ground up. Missing people, reminiscing about them, wondering how they are, reaching out, and even letting some of them naturally go — it’s just a healthier way to be. I don’t want to play in the who has the most friends game. I lost. It was overwhelming :) There are a lot of good friends I haven’t talked to in years but who have been connected to me through these networks. I’ll find my way to them again, and they will know that when I reach out it’s because I genuinely want to connect. It’s ok to be quiet. Not everyone needs a dose of your world 3 times a day. Sometimes you need a break — even from good wines.
Too often, we forget that the internet isn’t real life — it’s just a simulation of it. As such, it can become very easy to get caught up in the drama of the online world and forget about what matters most: the people in your life who love the actual person behind the selfies, without filters and hashtags. We are here to pursue experiences, to taste, to smell, to eat, to dance, to laugh, to breathe, to fuck, to love. Those are the HD/4K experiences of the REAL world — the ultimate online multiplayer that that ever was and will be.
Quiet is a space for nothing. Not quite silence, but not quite sound either. Nothing is how the world started. Detuning from the world opens up new ideas, like vibrant blue butterflies visiting your garden.
Social media was like ripping out a giant weed that had taken over my garden. I love technology, it’s fun, but the most exciting things are not inside the screens, they are around us in nature, and I want more.
The ride to the new world is just beginning, and we have the right to step off the bus at any time to take a brief walk, breathe some fresh air, get a little perspective, and perhaps even, for a little while, go #offline.
