I haven't used instagram for about a month or maybe two? I had made a very sporadic decision to delete a few social media apps from my phone (I believe the list was insta, twitter, reddit,and letterboxd) so I don't have a good timeline for how long it's been. I've mentioned this to a few people, and I normally get hit with a "good for you", but I feel like I haven't been able to really explore my feelings about it, which are a bit more complicated than "social media bad". I also never really intended for it to be permanant. I guess what I'm wondering about is when exactly I'll be ready to go back.
So for starters, I deleted the apps in the first place because I genuinely felt like a lab rat. Like, it seriously rewired my brain and I basically felt like an addict. I'd jump between different apps, look at the same posts over and over, spam the refresh button. The whole 9 yards. Like, it wasn't my strange addiction levels or anything but it was definitely there. So I knew I had to disconnect from the matrix for a sec.
I feel the smartphones kind of up the ante on the machinic sensuality depicted in the television scene from videodrome. Phones are basically TV's you touch and take into bed with you. The appeal to social connection is the self-conscious justification for social media, but I feel my experience is more of getting swept up in the literal tactility of the motions and the screen's response. It's a hook to that enviorment and it's non-spaciality. Content that's especially involving or stimulating is really just an accelerant.
From Naked Lunch: "sending can never be a means to anything but more sending, like junk."
One thing that's always interesting whenever I've taken breaks from social media is that I never miss it. It really is out of sight, out of mind. A part of it is just that I find new apps to scroll through pointlessly, but it's much less sustainable as a distraction and you're forced to look up eventually.
But I'll probably bring them back pretty soon. I know there's a lot that's fucked about mainstream for-profit social media, how these addicitive attributes are very intentional to maximize data-extraction, but I think there's still a lot to be done with it? I don't know, maybe that's dumb lol. It's where people are, and I feel like you're kind of rejecting a lot if your not engaging with it. One of the books I really want to read this year is Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard, because I think it touches on this kind of thing. Hyperreality and all that. There's actually bunch of books from him that I feel this urgent need to jump into.
The thing is that for the past few years I've been such a lurker on social media and my accounts are all boring as fuck. I really don't want to go back if I'm not going to do anything cool with it.I guess there's no way to do cool shit with it when your not there. So I should probably pop back and just experiment. Do whatever it is I want to do. I'll let you know if I figure it out lol.
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