My Week of Sanity & Not Posting
A social media power-user chooses to touch some grass.
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Since I created my Tumblr account over eleven years ago, I don’t think I’ve ever gone more than three days without posting. On a typical day, I will post at least half a dozen times, across a variety of social media platforms. Often far more than that.
In the last eleven years, I have created multiple viral textposts, memes, and essays. I’ve sold a book based on the strength of my posts. On the internet, I have popularized terms, alienated real-life professional contacts, and chased my way down all manner of toxic subcultural rabbit holes, sinking thousands of hours of time.
People who work in publicity and marketing tell me I am good at social media, and that is simply because I do not know how to fucking quit.
I’m thinking it might be interesting if I try to fucking quit. At least for a little while. Just to see what the lack of an audience would do to my brain.
I’ve been experimenting in recent months with practicing mindfulness. Since making the decision to inhabit physical reality once in a while instead of solely haunting the Posting Zone, I’ve found myself a lot less angry, and a lot more sad. I’ve also gotten more in touch with the reflective, solitary person that my teenaged self used to be.
I kinda miss that guy. He was an edgelord New Atheist who was not always kind to himself or others, but he knew how to derive pleasure from reading and his own ideas. The current me is too distracted, irritable, and detached from himself.
So I have decided to take a full week off from posting, and from consuming posts.
Will social media solitude make me a more languid, passive person? Without the emotional outlet of playing daily rounds of Call of Duty: Hot Take Warfare, will my inner rage explode outward, engulfing me and everyone I love? Could 168 hours of not posting cure my Autism and force me to develop conventional social skills?
