It's Not Social Media, It's You...

Techno-Relational Musings <3

Technology isn’t going anywhere. Social Media isn’t going anywhere. Leaving it is not going to change anything. Believe me, I know, I tried (for 5 months anyway). I missed memes and comedic content and, I love taking photos and had no other space to share my documented visual moments-so effortlessly! And so I returned. I re-emerged from under my rock.

I have noticed a recent, maybe not so recent trend, in which influencers and individuals alike are leaving social media (mainly Instagram, Facebook and TikTok), and they are claiming less anxiety, stress, and more freedom, typically due to the result of not feeling the pressure to post and perform and manically create content.

(I get it.)

I even wrote a Substack post about my own experience in leaving social media for a hot minute! However, I ultimately decided to hit “unpublish” upon my desire to hop back on the social inter-web (it just didn’t feel right!).

Truth be told, I think the influencers and the business owners, and your friends are leaving, because they’re using the apps wrong. Like, literally, WHY on earth would you try to make a living solely through social media apps?! And why on earth would you want to take this app so seriously?! Why on earth would you want to subject yourself to performances that make you palatable for the mainstream masses? Why make yourself dependent upon external partnerships, followers, fans, and the algorithm? I don’t know about you, but to me, that seems like, from the beginning, an economic relationship that was destined for failure. Why are we acting so surprised? Is that not relationships 101? Dependency on the external equates to a crumbling foundation. It’s gotta be sourced from within.

Here is something I’ve been playing with:

If you take social media less seriously, because it’s not serious, it can actually be a really fun way to play around in the modern age.

Upon analyzing my personal relationship with technology, I realized that a lot of my personal issues with it, had everything to do with: “Me, Myself, and I.” -De La Soul

I began to assess where exactly I had agency amongst this relationship. (Aha!)

As I started to engage with the app, by liking and saving things, much of which, were things of interest to me (comedic content, dogs, personal finance, gardening, preschool activities, rock hounding etc.) I was served more of the same content. I also decided to unfollow anything that was presenting itself as some type of “news” related content. (I know, if you’re reading this, you’re going: “UM…DUH”). Maybe this is all common knowledge to you, but as a relatively late adopter to social media and someone who lived a handful of years without consistent internet connection in her early twenties (sometimes in the forest or in canyons in a little tent!), this was kind of revolutionary to me.

All of a sudden, the app began to appear, more: FUN!

I was beginning to see less advertisements, less headlines inciting reaction, less serious, tragic, and awful things occurring on the planet. It’s not that I am pretending as if none of these horrific things are happening in real time, (I know all that I need to know about what’s going on on this planet through working in my Community, the Macro and Micro are one and the same), it’s more that, a political meme or rant is truly a waste of time. It’s highly unlikely that you’re going to change or encourage action to your cause through Instagram. Likewise, I rarely come across memes that encourage consciousness shifting thoughts! Also-I find it concerning if Instagram and Facebook and TikTok are considered our top sources of informed and educational content. (Yikes!).

So why stress about applying reason and critical thinking skills when it comes to social media? Aren’t we all doing that anyway when we consume material from other sources of media? Sounds exhausting to me.

My personal Instagram is defined as: My Inner World. I have a heaping 43 followers (most individuals I know), do to both, a major social restructuring of my life post Covid and two factor authentication, in which, I cannot access my old account (LOL). Anyway, rarely, does the content I post offer an accurate depiction of reality. I made it that way on purpose. No matter how hard I try, it’s not an accurate depiction of my real life or reality, because, any time we apply a lens or filter to something, it transmutes into something else. I somewhat like this aspect of it. I like that I can weave words under my images that offer the truth and mystery at the same time. What is real and unreal? What is accuracy and what is delusion? That’s up to you to decide. I’d like to think, that even I know that what I am sharing is real and true-but I am not sure that that is the case.

I recently took pictures of myself and my dogs in SunBeams. I liked the way the light and rays stretched out through the lens of my camera. It illuminated little rainbows and, to me, it made the skin on my arm look as if it contained little rainbow light prisms (at least to my eye, if I looked closely, it did). However, when I looked at the sun with my naked eyes, I could not see these rainbow light prisms. The camera changed it.

Perhaps, this is just my personal opinion, after all, it is. It is the lens through which I filter my experience and express into images and words. Or maybe, I feel this way, because, I never really had my self image or tied my material worth to the social media rat race. I have chosen slow and stable career growth versus cheap or manic content creation and dopamine dependent profit, and therefore, social media isn’t as deep of a crisis for me.

Maybe, if you have a problem with social media and it’s distortions and delusion, it has more to say about you? I know there is A LOT of issues with it. I know our technocratic authorities are not the most benevolent individuals. I know about data stealing and the horrors of AI deepfake porn-I also am not offering a solution. I just don’t see that the “corrupt” social media companies are going to cease to exist and new supposedly “moral and ethical” companies are going to “save us all” from the world’s evils. I don’t foresee that occurring without having to pay for it, either, out of our own pockets or in the form of consenting to things we may not agree with.

The power then stands upon the individual. But also-when has it not? No one coerces one into being an influencer or expanding one’s business via socials. There are always choices and options. What is one willing to trade for it? Poor mental health but a fat paycheck? Contorting performance over authenticity?

Can we be ok with the fact that not everything has to be fact checked and cited by scientific papers or the “proper” authorities? Maybe if we can allow for that to happen, we will recognize the freedom of thought, and even utilize our own intuition in the media discerning process. Maybe we can see lenses, filters, lights, media, story telling, for what it is-entertainment. Maybe we can chill the fuck out and not take these apps so goddamn seriously.

© The Playground by Kara Miffitt