The Desert Island
Over the past year or so I have made every effort to try and sever my addiction to technology, I've gone without a smartphone for around a month - replacing it with a modern but not-so capable Nokia 105. I've deleted all of my social media accounts and went completely cold turkey on any online social interaction, as I said in my last post - "if the conversations we are having online are so unimportant that you wouldn't reach out offline to talk about the same things why do we have them at all?". I've even bought a laptop to replace my desktop pc, a small ex-corporate device that has just about enough power to run a web browser with a few tabs open.
I've never succeeded though, it only takes a few weeks for me to recreate my social media accounts and I'm sitting at my desktop again playing whatever game is recommended to me on Steam. I'm not sure what this proves, am I so weak willed that I have to betray myself to pass the time or is it a testament to the job the data brokers and advertisers do that I can't stay away from their end product, I'm chasing the rush of dopamine like a heroin addict that would do anything for one more hit.
How do we fix this conundrum? A few years ago I had a friend that would create vlogs on YouTube, just talking about life and not doing anything in particular, ironically like I'm doing now - never got many views but I thought it was silly at the time. Now I realise that he had the right idea, everyone needs a hobby to keep the mind occupied. So many of us have just made the fatal mistake of making social media our hobby, not in the way to create something and share it but the need to consume as much content as you can from people you don't and won't ever have any personal relationship with.
I've started a new stint, all of my social media is gone again which has effectively ended my friendships that were being held together by the fiber-optic thread and I'm typing this out on my second hand laptop, my desktop gathering dust unplugged in the corner. I've kept a few accounts around as to not have the username be taken and I've kept my long inactive last.fm account that I emotionally can't bring myself to delete - but the sake of making my point, this website has become my hobby - no YouTube, no Spotify and no scrolling the endless human zoo of Instagram.
There is a certain shame that comes with this choice though - I keep playing through the scenario in my head of striking up a conversation with a stranger or bonding over some shared interest for them to then ask for a social media handle so we can keep in touch. In my make believe scenario would they think I'm rude and lying to them when I say I don't have social media or should I read off an email address and play a fool, or do I give a meandering speech about how I'm effectively a social media conscientious objector?
Is there a middle ground to be found, a peaceful solution? Lets say I make social media accounts on all of the popular sites, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter (x?) and I never post out of a disdain for the service. If I gave one of these account names to my make believe friend and they see I've never posted or interacted with anyone is this a worse image than not having the accounts at all? Would they think I'm some kind of friendless pariah or social reject?
Lots of questions here and no answers, sums up social media doesn't it. How many people keep their social media accounts active just in case they find themselves in my made up scenario even if they don't know it? This isn't some deep social commentary just the reality of it all, maybe some other web addicted lost soul finds my rambling on here and it encourages them to think about their situation in the way I have mine.
Let's put it in a metaphor, maybe I'm Robinson Crusoe, deleting social media and putting these self-imposed restrictions on my technology use has crashed my ship and I find myself on the desert island. Maybe a few months go by and through my introspection I find my metaphorical Friday - the main characters friend he rescues from cannibals in the novel for the unfamiliar. Then after a year I find my English Ship (read the novel) and I help rebuild it, free from the island forever. That could be the meaning of it all, we all have our own metaphorical ships to our own islands we've built in our heads that we have to rebuild and sail into the sunset.