Six Months Later...

Greetings from the Other Side of Social Media

The Interrupted Sleep, 1750 François Boucher PUBLIC DOMAIN METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART

Hello, Friend,

Yesterday’s essay was an epic undertaking. I could have spent days on it had I the inclination and energy. Digging into the rot of the broligarchy is just so…weird. They are just so…evil. It makes me feel physically sick when I realize how deeply these psychopaths have embedded themselves into every facet of our lives, our society, our government, our planet, even outer space. They’re omnipresent, insidious, like a fetid fungus that keeps spreading. Our elected officials on both sides of the aisle have handed them the keys to the kingdom in exchange for their dark magic and coffers of gold. Blue pill, red pill, any pill will do. The illusion of choice keeps us preoccupied.

“We are the music makers, we are the dreamers of dreams.”

Ode, Arthur O’Shaughnessy

The Bros believe they built it on their own, but everything they have came from us. Our data, our creativity, our content, our art, our attention, our subscriptions, our need for connection, our thoughts and dreams and struggles, our billions in tax dollars, our family and friends, they’ve built their fortunes on us. They are the takers, and we are the makers. With all that they have, they still want it all. They give back so little in comparison to what they’ve taken…much of it freely offered with the click of an unread TOS agreement.

It’s difficult to convince people they should leave social media, because people are stubborn and afraid of change and the instant gratification these platforms provide is seductive. The little dopamine hits from hearts and hugs and smiley face emojis light up our brains like a Christmas tree. The rush of posting a selfie and getting that instant love bomb or an opinion and getting a flurry of comments, it’s powerful, addictive stuff. I keep hoping the spell of the dark magic will be broken, but so far it’s holding strong.

There is a price to pay for leaving social media, and that price for me has been losing the people I thought were my people. My current friend group is furred and floral and feathered. A cow, a lamb, six dogs, our ever changing garden beds, and the birds who sing me lullabies each morning. They don’t do heart emojis, but they do something far more meaningful.

Of course there is value in the potential to reach so many people simultaneously. That was the glorious promise of the internet, before the Broligarchs turned it against us. The world wide web opened up new horizons. Yet it keeps shrinking and it keeps getting harder and harder to break through the tyranny of the algorithms. Why people can’t join forces to build platforms without the data mining and microtargeting and manipulation, I don’t know. I do know that it’s hard to build things and easier to keep bending to accommodate increasingly broken existing systems. Social media is so easy.

We pay a steep price for that ease.

It’s strange being awake in a world full of slumbering people. Would that I had the magic words to help them wake up, remember, stop feeding the monsters, rediscover the wonder that exists beyond their phone and computer screens. All of our dystopian novels offer breadcrumbs, who knew the soma would be social media? Who knew so many people would be so willing to embrace the absurd cartoon villains running a craptacular circus behind a fading two bit hustler shuffling center ring in an oversized red tie and baseball cap? Who knew how many people would be disinterested in doing anything significant to stop them.

Meh. Whatever.

“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.”

Brave New World, Aldous Huxley

Does any of this matter? Perhaps I’ve overestimated my talent or value or raison d’etre. What am I doing here? If people are happy living their digital half lives while the future fades in the background, what can I do to change that? I thought we’d rise up together united in a fury of passion and purpose and possibility, but it seems we’re going down separated by an infinite scroll of AI Slop, fake news, and meaningless memes.

We may be down, but we’re not out, yet. There are rumblings of awakenings. People are starting to realize the Tech Bros and their toxic platforms are not our friends. Mainstream media is collapsing, social media is devolving, the veil is lifting. As long as there’s hope, I’ll keep tapping into my keyboard here from the other side of social media.

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