It’s interesting watching various parts of the internet come around to where, based on what I’ve observed, an increasing number of people have found themselves over the past years: Social media is no replacement for actually doing stuff with your life.
Some years back, when I went through and did a “Facebook Friends Cut” (not terribly long before just disabling my account… probably a waste of time) to reduce it to people I interacted with outside Facebook, I was shocked to find out just how many people I’d been linked with on Facebook had removed their accounts. It doesn’t stand out until you see how many dead links there are. I’ve not gone back, I certainly don’t miss the place.
More and more people I know, at least, are taking more and more regular “connectivity breaks” where they’re just… not connected, no phone, partying like it’s 1999 and your carphone’s battery is dead.
Throw in a lot of writers and commentary “going dark” (see Substack and various other membership/subscription/email services), and I honestly think we’re seeing some of the death rattles of the centralized internet.
There’s something very … shortcutting about social media, similar to how drugs (and arguably porn) “cut out the middleman” and make your mind feel it has done something.
The hard part for me is that I know watching it is simply staring at a dumpster fire and even though I don’t participate, it’s still not a productive use of time (not even as a pastime really). And so quickly it becomes so repetitive.
Soon we’re going to have two worlds - one online and one entirely dark (or at least not visible in the “normal” areas).
“I’ve created an online petition with 10,000 signers! They’ll have to listen to us now!”
I think this is quite likely, and I think it’s also worth working to get there sooner rather than later. Start having gatherings in person, no phones. Fire pits are ideal for this, and I think I really need to get one figured out here even before I have a deck. 5-8 people, just… talk. I’ve been considering ATP or ATT nights (“Alcohol, Tobacco, {Theology/Philosophy}”. As they grow, split them, but have larger gatherings on occasion.
I really don’t know what the process looks like, though, not having grown up in that era. Internet hit around early high school for me, and while we had plenty of non-internet-based activities, I don’t have a great feel for totally offline organizing of social groups.
The main “trick” I’ve found is to get a small core group and then set up the meeting consistently (say every month on the second Tuesday) - and power through times with few people.
It can take months for it to “catch” but having it at a consistent time is important.
It’s much worse now that in was even 20 years ago - if you DON’T hand your family and/or community over based on your ideological bonds, then you are a pariah and not worthy to be considered in the “in club”.
But I think average people don’t have the energy to be enraged all the time, so the resolution will be the ending of the internet-hype-hate machines.
