🤖
I’ve been feeling very down about my addition to …. screens, the algorithm, social media, the silos. Whatever your name for it is, I’m ready to be independent (a bit related to Personal Finance, but not really) again, and reclaim my mind. I don’t think I’m humanities worst offender, by any means, but I’m accelerating down a slippery slope of brain rot and ai slop that I know I need to fight back from. We’re all here, in this thing we created (intentionally or not) together, so I’m hoping a few words on where we are and how we can maybe get out will inspire you too.
Many of us, I’m sure, are starting to feel this sinking feeling when they pick up their phone or device. For me, the hill might be a bit slipperier due to my multiple remote jobs. I’m connected to the web, and the people in it, almost every day. I do manage to take a day or more away from ‘work’ from time to time, but even then I’m constantly looking at a screen. I pull up my phone, scroll some of the social media apps that I’ve still allowed myself via some excuse to still have around(reddit, youtube, and when I’m feeling weak I’ll re download instagram). And I know that I’m wasting time in the deeply troubling, addictive, mid 2020’s way that is violently destructive.
Somehow, the algorithm, against its own survival mechanisms, showed me this video.
The creator uses a click-baity thumbnail and caption, describing things that I generally click on (thanks to the algorithm), but the content was less fear-mongery, and more action-plan. I did take notes, which something I often do during youtube videos that capture my attention (does anyone else do that?). Normally these notes, because they are in an electronic format simply live their digital lives on my notes app until I delete them in 6-9 years when I get a new phone or do a digital purge.
This time, though, a feeling stuck with me which caused me to re-read my notes and create an action plan from his advice. He had a 5 step plan with warmups and exercises, all cleverly named. I’m not sure I’ll take his routine on in its unadulterated form, but I do plan to steal the bits that make my brain happy. His advice is as follows:
- Scroll with a Goal - always ask: why am I picking up a screen? use the tech as a tool, not a crutch. Incidentally, I’ve relegated instagram to my desktop computer from now on. Its clunky to use, and prevents me from doom scrolling, or at least it has so far.
- Bullshit Proof Vest - Exercise your inner skeptic. Self educate (wikipedia link) yourself on cognitive bias, and then read books and debunk them… not sure about this one.
- Mission McClued-In - always ask: What evidence would I need to change my mind? Read some books on media theory: Propaganda by Jacques ell: Susan Sontag on photography, marshal McLuhan understanding media amuse ourselves to death, manufacturing consent (add these to my antilibrary list)
- Algorithmic Resistance - my absolute favorite and why we’re all here (or just me).
- Avoid algorithms and create your OWN curiosity garden by using the Internet Archive, start an online course on mymooc.com, explore https://ourworldindata.org/
- Create your own curiosity garden: an online space (here) to post cool things you found, new rabbit holes, ideas you want to share, projects (finished, wips, and future dreams) and your evolving thoughts on all of it.
- My inspo for some curiosity garden things: www.maggieappleton.com - read her article on ‘a brief history and ethos of the digital garden’.
- Post your Public Learning
- Man Plans and Rod Laughs - the easy one. Just watch the twighlight zone. Great advice, I think we can do more 🙂
Now, of all of these things, I think the two that tickled me the most was number 1 and number 3. I’ve strived to ‘scroll with a goal’ always, but it just never works. the thing that stood out here was he really offered some solutions to the scrolling (see number 3). The idea of playing with the internet archive or other informative websites to create your own creativity and curiousity garden really hits home for me.
Number 3 algorithmic resistance really got me excited, and its why we’re all here right now. I’ve wanted to start a blog for just about ever, but have always been held back because I felt like it would have to be perfect to be published. I would have to have Fully Formed Opinions before hitting publish, and gosh dang it they’d better be rock solid. Oh yea, and I’d better be a ‘good’ writer if someone was going to be able to read my writing (whatever that means). Cultivating a digital garden is the perfect unblock. Its a space where I can forget about the expectations of what a blog should be, and just put my process out there. Of course, hitting publish hasn’t happened as of this writing, but it will soon, and it won’t be perfect.
Its a more natural way for someone to own a space. A canvas to create, yes, but more imporantnly a fertile surface on which to grow. A garden is the perfect metaphor really. If you look at my actual garden now, you’ll see a mess. Its fall, and I’m currently living on a construction site. As the weather warms, and the construction completes, Ill be able to cultivate small corners at a time into beauty. In the same way, this might be a mess now, but as I pick away at it, new and interesting plots will grow and mature into beautiful and ineresting things to look at and, perhaps, interact with. Hopefully it will be a place that links to other indie gardens, and allows people to follow their own rabbit holes to wherever they want, without being led by the nose by some corporte brain melting algorightm.
I also hope, as this gets cultivated, that I cultivate my own brain. That I bring it back from the dead, a bit, and extricate myself from that corporate algorithm. I hope that I can connect with real people also looking for connection, in the way that this information superhighway was maybe originally imagined.
So now, I’ve got a little list of what my goals on this website (notion page currently) are, and I’ve listed them below.
- My personal goals here
- Build a digital curiosity garden
- Regularly share said garden
- Showcase real art that I create, or art that I can share from others with their permission
- Be intentional with my tech usage. Use it as a tool, not let the tool use me
- Read some of the books on his list
- Keep you all up to date with what I’ve been reading
- Document my X and Bluesky Experiment
- Start my X / Bluesky experiment