Kate, I feel you. I am tentatively hoping we are witnessing the beginning of a swelling moment of mass tech-refusal, because one major problem of being a modern-day Luddite is the loneliness of it. I personally might refuse, but everywhere I go is still saturated with tech. However, I've noticed more and more people talking about these things lately. I recently wrote this essay about how I think it's a valid choice not to follow current events, for mental health preservation: https://rosiewhinray.substack.com/p/strong-stories-for-tower-times
Phones are extremely addictive and need to be treated as such. Reverting to dumbphone is advisable; another method I have found to be successful in limiting tech use at home is deciding on a certain amount of screen time per day, then setting an alarm to enforce the decided limit (I did half an hour morning and evening). The thing is, the real world feels better, and once you've broken the back of the addiction it becomes easier not to crave it.
Best of luck with continued recovery. I'm sorry you're having such a shitty time. Thanks for keeping it real. Solidarity
Your gift as a writer has been honed to the point where even a brain injury cannot taint its magnificence. This was an awesome read that reflects the severity of our current predicament but somehow manages to communicate dread in a manner that paradoxically, by virtue of the article's existence, exposes the indomitable human spirit. I would like to end with a quote attributed to Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is when good people do nothing"
Two books I've read recently were really clarifying for me, even though they are more analyses of past mistakes on the left rather than offering solutions for the future. 'Log Off' by Katherine Cross is an incredible analysis of why social media can't be the answer for our communities or social movements, and it came out in 2023 so she was ahead of the curve in terms of the arguments that a lot more people are making now. 'If We Burn' by Vincent Bevins is a history of several uprisings around the world in the 2010s and why they failed to achieve their goals and, in many cases, inadvertently resulted in autocratic backsliding. Though it's not US-focused, I think many of the lessons apply to the American left as well. I've been evangelical about this book since I read it, because it goes beyond social media to articulate a lot of the things that I have found frustrating in social movements of this century, and all of the veteran activists he interviews for the book have insight to offer for how to do things differently in the future.
Personally, I can't overstate how much my own mental health improved when I stepped away from Twitter and then BlueSky; I've hung onto instagram, which at least is much less addictive for me. I've been trying to organize with trans people local to my area to get support networks and mutual aid in place. I don't know if this will ever turn into something more like political organizing, but it's felt really good to meet more people in the community and to have our little group be focused offline. And I'm heartened by the fact that more and more people seem to be recognizing that social media hasn't been helping us, and that we need to rethink our movement strategies generally. Although I have seen people out in the streets, at least in major cities where I don't live, and this has been heartening, I also believe that part of why I haven't seen more street protests is that there is more of a broader understanding that street protests might not be an effective tactic for every political goal. My hope is that at least some activists out there are brainstorming new repertoires of contention. I don't know what those might be, but I don't think we've exhausted the possibilities.
I’ve always enjoyed your writing so much Kate and I hope you make a full recovery from your injury. I’m a 56 yo physician and it’s HARD to not scroll to “veg out” ..Your piece really hit home 🙏🏻
This has been really on my mind and thank you for writing it- it's helped crystallize a lot of my feelings around "tech refusal" and well, logging off. The politics of the platform owners was the catalyst for my own platform exit, but knowing what I know now about the experience of living without, I would have left much sooner for -health- reasons. We do not know how much of ourselves we've given over to Device until we abstain. Deleting instagram unlocked, for me at least, the long lost ability to sit down and read a book. As an artist, I considered these platforms compulsory for sharing my content and also for discovering new art- even as the invisible hand of the algorithm began to hide my work from others, and slowly filled my feed with ever more homogenous cliche. Geert Lovink's 2019 book "Sad by Design," put it perfectly - "I want to leave but I can’t; there’s too much going on but it’s boring; it’s useful yet disgusting. If we dare to admit it, our addictions are filled with an emptiness at the prospect of life unplugged from the stream. I want to delete it all, but not now." https://www.are.na/block/20444010
If this is what you can do on half a brain, I look forward to seeing you back to firing on all neurons once again. If you take a while to get there, don't worry. This will do more than fine.
I have felt crazy for repeating a few points over and over again in essays I've written and published during the last 9 years. Some of those points:
1. Addiction is the tech industry's primary product.
2. Political action must be local.
3. Our imaginations have been assaulted for literally *thousands of years*, and it takes a lot of work to remain alive, cogent, helpful, and wherever you actually are.
Thank you for sharing some of these beliefs. I'm glad you're decided to try to heal up how you can. And you are still COOKING re: writing precise and affecting sentences and paragraphs, concussion be damned.
Today a headline I read left me pretty much catatonic with disgust, and I was blessed that a coworker invited me over to his place just to see his maple sugaring set up, and again blessed that I understood that I needed to go there and not reflexively bury myself in digital bullshit to drown out my thoughts. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon just talking to him and his friend, a lot about the crazy shit going on, but also about trees and sugaring and whatever else. I might also go the dumb phone route. This howling nightmare distraction machine in my pocket is simply not worth it, it doesn’t help me or anyone else.
ETA: I’m not just live laugh loving it in New England though, I’m getting more and more involved in my union and other organizing, in person, offline.
"Everyone hates me when I say this because we are all little addicts who want to defend our addictions and the livelihoods that are now unfortunately entangled up with them, but: we have yet to reckon both totally and personally with the fact that the smarphone is an anti-social instrument of control, surveillance, and self-annihilation. Fortunately, this collective denial is starting to weaken."
Reading this from my smartphone like 'oh yeah, 100%' but not sure how to turn this addiction around
It’s easy to lose sight of the inherent unknowableness of the future. I appreciate this well-written and thoughtful reminder. We can all see the likely result of current trends (mostly horrific) but we have to leave room for the unexpected. And I think you’re on to something in focusing on the phone as a culprit in our despair and impotence. There was a time when it seemed the connectedness of these devices could make new things possible. But these tools have been hijacked for social control, and we have to start looking at them differently. They are not and cannot be neutral, and our addiction to using them has made us weak and disconnected. I was a devoted reader most of my life, but these days I can’t finish a book. That didn’t happen naturally or accidentally. I hope we can convince people to see their phones as they truly are and not as the miracle of technology we once imagined.
I had similar processing as you do here and I reached a similar conclusion. Insofar as my social feeds can be curated, I began to consciously follow and interact with content that I wanted to see to try and train my algorithms despite content throttling. I wanted to see more ordinary people organizing and people fighting back; I found those people and followed them. The elephant in the room is that DSA is trying to build that bench. And when I realized I was spending too much time inside wallowing, I forced myself to sign up for volunteering, including for DSA representatives running for office because they are the ones working with labor and actually trying to fight back, unlike Schumer and Gillibrand and all the feckless institutions that not only failed us but led us to this moment. Now is the moment to get involved.
Kate, I feel you. I am tentatively hoping we are witnessing the beginning of a swelling moment of mass tech-refusal, because one major problem of being a modern-day Luddite is the loneliness of it. I personally might refuse, but everywhere I go is still saturated with tech. However, I've noticed more and more people talking about these things lately. I recently wrote this essay about how I think it's a valid choice not to follow current events, for mental health preservation: https://rosiewhinray.substack.com/p/strong-stories-for-tower-times
Phones are extremely addictive and need to be treated as such. Reverting to dumbphone is advisable; another method I have found to be successful in limiting tech use at home is deciding on a certain amount of screen time per day, then setting an alarm to enforce the decided limit (I did half an hour morning and evening). The thing is, the real world feels better, and once you've broken the back of the addiction it becomes easier not to crave it.
Best of luck with continued recovery. I'm sorry you're having such a shitty time. Thanks for keeping it real. Solidarity
really enjoyed this — thank you!
Your gift as a writer has been honed to the point where even a brain injury cannot taint its magnificence. This was an awesome read that reflects the severity of our current predicament but somehow manages to communicate dread in a manner that paradoxically, by virtue of the article's existence, exposes the indomitable human spirit. I would like to end with a quote attributed to Edmund Burke, "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is when good people do nothing"
Two books I've read recently were really clarifying for me, even though they are more analyses of past mistakes on the left rather than offering solutions for the future. 'Log Off' by Katherine Cross is an incredible analysis of why social media can't be the answer for our communities or social movements, and it came out in 2023 so she was ahead of the curve in terms of the arguments that a lot more people are making now. 'If We Burn' by Vincent Bevins is a history of several uprisings around the world in the 2010s and why they failed to achieve their goals and, in many cases, inadvertently resulted in autocratic backsliding. Though it's not US-focused, I think many of the lessons apply to the American left as well. I've been evangelical about this book since I read it, because it goes beyond social media to articulate a lot of the things that I have found frustrating in social movements of this century, and all of the veteran activists he interviews for the book have insight to offer for how to do things differently in the future.
Personally, I can't overstate how much my own mental health improved when I stepped away from Twitter and then BlueSky; I've hung onto instagram, which at least is much less addictive for me. I've been trying to organize with trans people local to my area to get support networks and mutual aid in place. I don't know if this will ever turn into something more like political organizing, but it's felt really good to meet more people in the community and to have our little group be focused offline. And I'm heartened by the fact that more and more people seem to be recognizing that social media hasn't been helping us, and that we need to rethink our movement strategies generally. Although I have seen people out in the streets, at least in major cities where I don't live, and this has been heartening, I also believe that part of why I haven't seen more street protests is that there is more of a broader understanding that street protests might not be an effective tactic for every political goal. My hope is that at least some activists out there are brainstorming new repertoires of contention. I don't know what those might be, but I don't think we've exhausted the possibilities.
I’ve always enjoyed your writing so much Kate and I hope you make a full recovery from your injury. I’m a 56 yo physician and it’s HARD to not scroll to “veg out” ..Your piece really hit home 🙏🏻
This has been really on my mind and thank you for writing it- it's helped crystallize a lot of my feelings around "tech refusal" and well, logging off. The politics of the platform owners was the catalyst for my own platform exit, but knowing what I know now about the experience of living without, I would have left much sooner for -health- reasons. We do not know how much of ourselves we've given over to Device until we abstain. Deleting instagram unlocked, for me at least, the long lost ability to sit down and read a book. As an artist, I considered these platforms compulsory for sharing my content and also for discovering new art- even as the invisible hand of the algorithm began to hide my work from others, and slowly filled my feed with ever more homogenous cliche. Geert Lovink's 2019 book "Sad by Design," put it perfectly - "I want to leave but I can’t; there’s too much going on but it’s boring; it’s useful yet disgusting. If we dare to admit it, our addictions are filled with an emptiness at the prospect of life unplugged from the stream. I want to delete it all, but not now." https://www.are.na/block/20444010
Poignant and appreciated
Thank you
If this is what you can do on half a brain, I look forward to seeing you back to firing on all neurons once again. If you take a while to get there, don't worry. This will do more than fine.
I have felt crazy for repeating a few points over and over again in essays I've written and published during the last 9 years. Some of those points:
1. Addiction is the tech industry's primary product.
2. Political action must be local.
3. Our imaginations have been assaulted for literally *thousands of years*, and it takes a lot of work to remain alive, cogent, helpful, and wherever you actually are.
Thank you for sharing some of these beliefs. I'm glad you're decided to try to heal up how you can. And you are still COOKING re: writing precise and affecting sentences and paragraphs, concussion be damned.
Today a headline I read left me pretty much catatonic with disgust, and I was blessed that a coworker invited me over to his place just to see his maple sugaring set up, and again blessed that I understood that I needed to go there and not reflexively bury myself in digital bullshit to drown out my thoughts. I spent a good chunk of the afternoon just talking to him and his friend, a lot about the crazy shit going on, but also about trees and sugaring and whatever else. I might also go the dumb phone route. This howling nightmare distraction machine in my pocket is simply not worth it, it doesn’t help me or anyone else.
ETA: I’m not just live laugh loving it in New England though, I’m getting more and more involved in my union and other organizing, in person, offline.
"Everyone hates me when I say this because we are all little addicts who want to defend our addictions and the livelihoods that are now unfortunately entangled up with them, but: we have yet to reckon both totally and personally with the fact that the smarphone is an anti-social instrument of control, surveillance, and self-annihilation. Fortunately, this collective denial is starting to weaken."
Reading this from my smartphone like 'oh yeah, 100%' but not sure how to turn this addiction around
The point about justifying addiction really hit home for me. I can't deny the personal truth of that observation.
Truly excellent, Kate.
It’s easy to lose sight of the inherent unknowableness of the future. I appreciate this well-written and thoughtful reminder. We can all see the likely result of current trends (mostly horrific) but we have to leave room for the unexpected. And I think you’re on to something in focusing on the phone as a culprit in our despair and impotence. There was a time when it seemed the connectedness of these devices could make new things possible. But these tools have been hijacked for social control, and we have to start looking at them differently. They are not and cannot be neutral, and our addiction to using them has made us weak and disconnected. I was a devoted reader most of my life, but these days I can’t finish a book. That didn’t happen naturally or accidentally. I hope we can convince people to see their phones as they truly are and not as the miracle of technology we once imagined.
I had similar processing as you do here and I reached a similar conclusion. Insofar as my social feeds can be curated, I began to consciously follow and interact with content that I wanted to see to try and train my algorithms despite content throttling. I wanted to see more ordinary people organizing and people fighting back; I found those people and followed them. The elephant in the room is that DSA is trying to build that bench. And when I realized I was spending too much time inside wallowing, I forced myself to sign up for volunteering, including for DSA representatives running for office because they are the ones working with labor and actually trying to fight back, unlike Schumer and Gillibrand and all the feckless institutions that not only failed us but led us to this moment. Now is the moment to get involved.
Awesome read man hope you feel better soon