Thank you so much for articulating what a have been feeling. I'm also Palestinian and been feeling more and demolished. Yesterday I was thinking about how I had trekked through the Sahara desert last year for 5 days and it brought me clarity and peace. I've been craving for that solitude and connection to the land again. Your article has been an invitation for me to sit in deep contemplation again. Thank you 💙
I’m glad this resonates! Wow trekking through the Sahara sounds like a surreal trip, I always found the desert despite how little of organic life can thrive there to actually really be teeming with aliveness and spirit. It makes sense that many prophets had their visions in the desert
I very much resonate with this. I also have this relationship with social media. Tried quiting many times but haven't managed to permanently do so. Tracking and parenting apps have been helpful in limiting usage though. Hope one day we're able to connect globally and locally without an endless doomscroll corporate algorithm hijacking our experience!
Thank you for sharing! I think that quitting is not enough on its own the consumption must be replaced with creation. To go out and build alternatives infrastructure in the real world 🌿
ever since you posed the question "but what does it do?" it has echoed in my mind about everything. one thing that has become apparent to me is that these little devices that do hold a lot of potential and give us a lot of utility, have also given us all a very real physical addiction. i don't think a time has existed before where everyone, and i mean everyone, in the fabric of our society has become tasked with sobering themselves from a very real physical addiction. call it dopamine, or whatever, the act of seeking -- pleasure, emotion, release, whatever -- that comes from scrolling. it is a very specific state that you get into once the never ending tunnel of content consumes you. you slip into it like a stream, and it does something to your nervous system. you start breathing more shallow, your eyes focus and refocus frantically.
sure, maybe TV was or is an addiction to many, but it has very real material boundaries that at some point people will notice and end the loop. you sit for a couple hours watching a show and finally you desire to get up, and you're done. with the phone, it lives with you and breathes with you.
you get caught in this dopamine cycle. it's similar to nicotine. it becomes a habit that while you are actively doing it you wish you weren't, but for some reason you don't want to, or can't, stop. capture.
so what does it do? what are its material conditions? what are the material conditions that produce this, and what matter must we move to end or bludgeon these cycles?
we talk about 'if only we were a better or different person we could refrain from participating in this frantic feening' -- it's not about how we can structure our inner world to be better with the phone. it needs a material change.
i've been thinking about buying one of those brick devices where it locks your phone from apps and you can't unlock it without getting back to the brick device. it sounds stupid, but short of switching to a dumb phone, which is on my mind and maybe the next thing i try, seems like a good idea.
i remember when i was younger and in art school, i still had a laptop and broadband internet and i would sit in my room which served as my studio for hours listening to music and drawing and painting. i didn't get distracted by platforms because it didn't exist yet. facebook at the time was a nook of the internet that was actually meant for connecting, not consuming. i still had the internet at my fingertips and didn't get captured by it. places on the web, such as this substack, were individual web pages, each one different and unique and shitty but awesome in their own unique way.
your project with the home lab is inspiring. now with ai you can code your own substack, your own personal web page again. i am imagining a new digital world more like the old one, where the internet becomes again a de-platformed, de-centralized space, where you can stumble into dark corners and meet like minded people or interact with something interesting that isn't on an endless carosouel.
i think posting and using any social platforms is best done from a laptop/desktop. you sit down, intentionally spend some time posting or consuming, and get off. on a computer, even when on instagram, you don't get the same weird doom scrolly effect that you experience on your phone. no shiny glass screen to swipe against. so i think that is a great idea and i would ask how does it feel when you start trying.
i reminisce again as i did on the mural board that communicating with someone on a blutetooth mesh network seems like ti would be fun and interesting, unique and clandestine. i think we should start building decentralized digital spaces again, if not real physical spaces again. but at least digital ones.
i know this was a lot to read but it also helped me flesh some thoughts ive been having out.
good luck on this journey. i think, personally, it's a material one less so than an inner journey we need to go on, but of course it's always both. burn it or reshape it physically.
Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to comment I so appreciate it and am in full agreement with everything you wrote here. It is purely a material thing, not a moral one. Exploring how these behaviors are formed and how can they be formed differently. I’m actually going to post later today some more meandering contemplations about the metaphysics of all of this. What I know for sure is that this is something we should all struggle with and overcome.
Yuval, I am now 44 days off of social media (not counting Substack). The difference in mental and emotional clarity — and confidence in my positive / revolutionary potential — is already immense. I’m excited to see you experience the same. When I was on Instagram, I enjoyed and learned a great deal from reading your stories and posts every day. Now I look forward to more of your content here and in other forms!
Thank you so much for articulating what a have been feeling. I'm also Palestinian and been feeling more and demolished. Yesterday I was thinking about how I had trekked through the Sahara desert last year for 5 days and it brought me clarity and peace. I've been craving for that solitude and connection to the land again. Your article has been an invitation for me to sit in deep contemplation again. Thank you 💙
I’m glad this resonates! Wow trekking through the Sahara sounds like a surreal trip, I always found the desert despite how little of organic life can thrive there to actually really be teeming with aliveness and spirit. It makes sense that many prophets had their visions in the desert
Yes! My ancestors came to me with extraordinary visions.
Thank you for this supportive nectar of coherence! It appeared in my email (on my phone) at just the right time.
hehe I glad you found it helpful
I very much resonate with this. I also have this relationship with social media. Tried quiting many times but haven't managed to permanently do so. Tracking and parenting apps have been helpful in limiting usage though. Hope one day we're able to connect globally and locally without an endless doomscroll corporate algorithm hijacking our experience!
Thank you for sharing! I think that quitting is not enough on its own the consumption must be replaced with creation. To go out and build alternatives infrastructure in the real world 🌿
ever since you posed the question "but what does it do?" it has echoed in my mind about everything. one thing that has become apparent to me is that these little devices that do hold a lot of potential and give us a lot of utility, have also given us all a very real physical addiction. i don't think a time has existed before where everyone, and i mean everyone, in the fabric of our society has become tasked with sobering themselves from a very real physical addiction. call it dopamine, or whatever, the act of seeking -- pleasure, emotion, release, whatever -- that comes from scrolling. it is a very specific state that you get into once the never ending tunnel of content consumes you. you slip into it like a stream, and it does something to your nervous system. you start breathing more shallow, your eyes focus and refocus frantically.
sure, maybe TV was or is an addiction to many, but it has very real material boundaries that at some point people will notice and end the loop. you sit for a couple hours watching a show and finally you desire to get up, and you're done. with the phone, it lives with you and breathes with you.
you get caught in this dopamine cycle. it's similar to nicotine. it becomes a habit that while you are actively doing it you wish you weren't, but for some reason you don't want to, or can't, stop. capture.
so what does it do? what are its material conditions? what are the material conditions that produce this, and what matter must we move to end or bludgeon these cycles?
we talk about 'if only we were a better or different person we could refrain from participating in this frantic feening' -- it's not about how we can structure our inner world to be better with the phone. it needs a material change.
i've been thinking about buying one of those brick devices where it locks your phone from apps and you can't unlock it without getting back to the brick device. it sounds stupid, but short of switching to a dumb phone, which is on my mind and maybe the next thing i try, seems like a good idea.
i remember when i was younger and in art school, i still had a laptop and broadband internet and i would sit in my room which served as my studio for hours listening to music and drawing and painting. i didn't get distracted by platforms because it didn't exist yet. facebook at the time was a nook of the internet that was actually meant for connecting, not consuming. i still had the internet at my fingertips and didn't get captured by it. places on the web, such as this substack, were individual web pages, each one different and unique and shitty but awesome in their own unique way.
your project with the home lab is inspiring. now with ai you can code your own substack, your own personal web page again. i am imagining a new digital world more like the old one, where the internet becomes again a de-platformed, de-centralized space, where you can stumble into dark corners and meet like minded people or interact with something interesting that isn't on an endless carosouel.
i think posting and using any social platforms is best done from a laptop/desktop. you sit down, intentionally spend some time posting or consuming, and get off. on a computer, even when on instagram, you don't get the same weird doom scrolly effect that you experience on your phone. no shiny glass screen to swipe against. so i think that is a great idea and i would ask how does it feel when you start trying.
i reminisce again as i did on the mural board that communicating with someone on a blutetooth mesh network seems like ti would be fun and interesting, unique and clandestine. i think we should start building decentralized digital spaces again, if not real physical spaces again. but at least digital ones.
i know this was a lot to read but it also helped me flesh some thoughts ive been having out.
good luck on this journey. i think, personally, it's a material one less so than an inner journey we need to go on, but of course it's always both. burn it or reshape it physically.
Thank you so much for taking the time and energy to comment I so appreciate it and am in full agreement with everything you wrote here. It is purely a material thing, not a moral one. Exploring how these behaviors are formed and how can they be formed differently. I’m actually going to post later today some more meandering contemplations about the metaphysics of all of this. What I know for sure is that this is something we should all struggle with and overcome.
Yuval, I am now 44 days off of social media (not counting Substack). The difference in mental and emotional clarity — and confidence in my positive / revolutionary potential — is already immense. I’m excited to see you experience the same. When I was on Instagram, I enjoyed and learned a great deal from reading your stories and posts every day. Now I look forward to more of your content here and in other forms!
hell yeah! Here we are resisting the encroachment of big tech on our attention and building a new world 🤘🏼