I challenged myself to take a break from social media for one year. That was in August and August is rolling around again. So far, mostly good. I scroll occassionally, I click like occassionally, I see what people are up to and even discovered some new music.
For the most part, I have kept to my guns and am taking a break. I used to feel my IQ melting like an ice cube in the sun on a hot day in Cuba, and somehow wind up posting an irate comment on someone's wall whom I didn't even know. It was in some of those moments, I had to let go. What really made me pull away and set the proverbial gun down was that the rage and comments in social media have real life impact. The way we think and imagine the world to be affects people's lives, and deaths.
It was kind of heavy. I had to stand outside and look at the sky for ahwhile. Virtual reality is a thing unto itself, but social media is also an example of virtual reality. Our preconceptions, stereotypes, concepts, world view, et. al.--they are all a form of virtual reality in the sense that much of the world exists only in our head.
Clearly, COVID times allowed me to get philosophical but it was well overdue. Lockdown allowed to the world to stop--and suddenly all those things I "had" to do, well, I didn't really have to do them. It was an illusion of productivity and an illusion of urgency. Of course, we must fill our days with something. We don't even "have" to go to the grocery store, but we have tasks and goals that we set our mind to, whether we are fulfilling Maslov's needs, or some higher vision or lesser impulse. Being able to let go of not one but almost all of my "must do" items on the list wasn't just liberating it was show-stopping. I could create my life, my own life, like clay from the ground when the world started.
The first part of this reinvention was setting down the painting that had been created of me. Social media photos are from reality, but the sum is greater than the parts. That, I believe, is the point. Like iconography in a church or temple, it creates myth and reinforces it. This is perfect for music and entertainment, branding and self identity.
Social media is itself also entertainment. People use it for fun! Somehow, though, the seriousness of the myths and ideas we create, and how they affect us all was a concept that is prevalent (so prevalent it's hard to see it like the forest through the trees) that social media was like the prism that showed the beam of light on the wall. I finally "got it"--Eureka.
Each platform is different, for example while Facebook is more about self identity and a public scrapbook, TikTok, from what I understand (I do not use the platform as I am too busy hollering 'get off my lawn'), is like copper for the electric current of trends, allowing them to speed through culture at the rate of 100mph. Twitter is about hashtags. So, for awhile yet...I will be #creatingmyreality.
