Breaking the doom (scrolling) loop
For the past ~year I’ve experimented with being less online. I’ve written publicly about how I liken social media to addiction after some failed attempts to quit it all together. I’m experimenting with new boundaries to reset my relationship with it after being off for a long period.
The main problem with working in the technology industry around being on social feeds is that it’s so normalized that is almost required, but as a result everyone subscribes to the same group think, the same shared fears, and the same disconnect with reality (in many ways). The upside is that if you’re part of that ecosystem you have more access to people, ideas, and opportunities.
The algorithms are designed to hack you, so you need to hack them back
The algorithms are designed to hack our brains so that we get periodic dopamine hits plus feel just the right amount of fear and insecurity that we feel like we need to come back to these walled gardens to feel safe and validated. This is obviously unhealthy for many reasons and I personally attribute it to many of the problems we see in society and in business. It’s a drug, just instead of being consumed through substance it’s consumed through a screen. Worse, there are millions of bots on these platforms designed to manipulate narratives via anonymity. The end result is that people who spend a lot of time here get naturally angry, anxious, and discontent with life.
They are designed to adhere to our preferences though, so we can hack them back through engagement. To do this I’m experimenting with a few principles specifically on X:
Only interact with real people. This means only following real humans I know or positive informational accounts, turning off replies from non followers (no more bots), and aggressively muting / blocking anon or pseudo anonymous accounts (real humans have better things to say)
Clearing my algorithm. This means removing any old content that could skew my algorithm in weird ways, blocking negative content and muting disinformation.
Only writing in long form. I’ve blogged in long form for a long time and I’ve realized that it’s a much better communication medium than short form content. I spend a lot of time reading long form ideas to understand or challenge them which is impossible with short form content
I started working on this yesterday after my month long break and so far things are better. I’ll report back and see what happens.