I feel hacked
The Internet. What a wonderful thing. Access to all kinds of information at our fingertips. Connecting people all over the world. Social media is here to allow sharing of ideas and information. Great ! The Internet evolved to be so ubiquitous that we are connected 24/7, even though we don't need to.
I lived almost two decades of my life in a world without Internet. And then I saw it coming. It was amazing! The forums, chats, the “surfing”, discovering pages at random, exploring the web without being followed by cookies and ads.
I totally understand Todd Presta in his post: “Lamentations of a Web 1.0 Dinosaur”:
“Doom Scrolling meant panning side-to-side in the 3D view of a first-person shooter video game called “Doom,” not filling your head with an infinite scrolling feed of bad news and wrath.” – Todd Presta
Nowadays, searching anything online is frustrating. Pages and pages of sponsored results. Ads everywhere! Click-bait galore!
And social media... what happened there? I felt super cool when I connected to BBS's back in the day. I became an early adopter of “social media” later. I told my friends about it. I remember I was super excited to have gotten an invite to create a Facebook account. I encouraged people to join! I was so innocent!
Today, in my mid-40's, I feel hacked. After 10+ years using the major social media services (Twitter/Facebook/Instagram), I was unknowingly conditioned to scroll through a news feed. I've unconsciously internalized this behavior; it has become a habit. I deleted my Facebook and Twitter accounts around 3 years ago.
This post from Brandon: I'm a Little Fed Up inspired me to write today. And I sympathize with his frustration:
I'm starting to miss my super quiet blog where I just chatted with folks over email. I just don't think I'm cut out for the modern internet. — Brandon's Journal
I have a Mastodon account and sometimes I wonder if I really want to keep it. Just because of the behavior it triggers in me: spending time scrolling through a feed. I curate my feed very carefully, but still, I see myself wanting to check out what’s new all the time, even though I don’t really need to. It's weird. Something reprogrammed by neuro-circuitry, and I crave for novelty all the time.
If I'm done checking my Mastodon feed, then I search for other sources of quick dopamine boosts. In my case now it's my RSS feed, my email, Discord, online forums. It's the same learned behavior in different environments. That bothers me.
Anyway, I am rethinking whatever I have left in terms of online inputs. The frequency, the volume of information, the usefulness.
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Post 12/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!
#100DaysToOffload #100Days #internet #NoisyMusings #socialmedia #attentionresistance
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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.