Solo dinner in Tokyo, January 2024
I don’t know if it’s just me but I always get a warm and fuzzy feeling in my gut whenever I stumble upon an interesting blog written by someone who is living their small unknown complex life God-knows-where. I feel connected by our common humanity. We’ll never meet, but I can picture them sitting on their sofa writing on their laptop or using the computer in their kitchen, writing when the kids are asleep, writing in the morning, writing when the first snowfall arrives, writing about their new job, about losing their job, about moving to a new city, about this film they just watched, about their husband who died a few years ago. A blog is a small and beautiful thing and I am grateful it exists.
The other day I was on social media and I felt another wave of resentment pour over me. It was almost tinted with rage. I don’t like how the very structure of social media fundamentally changes the way we write and share our feelings. People say we can decide how we want to use social media, but that doesn’t change the fact that Instagram, to use an example, is built to manipulate us and our dopamine levels. When we enter the world of social media, it’s like walking into a casino that is determined to get us addicted. We become altered simply by being in these places and become a twisted, more anxious, more egotistical version of ourselves. Not only that, everywhere we look, there is a branding or marketing message targeting our backs. It’s annoying. Buy this. Follow us. Like and share. We have a vulnerable story to share with you today because actually this is an ad. Or. Because being vulnerable is cool nowadays! At the very least it makes you trust us more.
You can have a good experience on social media if you are very intentional and mindful. There are accounts I really enjoy on social media and I have found a lot of inspiration there. But I still believe the corrosive effects of social media outweigh its good, because I know for a fact that social media apps CAN be re-designed to be less addictive and less manipulative, and they are not because of the ultra-capitalistic world we live in. I’m not sure who or what I’m angry at or if it’s even anger I feel. Maybe it’s sadness instead.
All that to say, it’s easier to breathe and write here. The energy here is so much cleaner.
I turned off my phone today at 5pm and it’s now 11.13pm. I haven’t turned it back on. This simple action cuts me off from the world. It feels so good somehow. I guess I’m just in this phase of my life where I am tired of almost everything that is happening in the “mainstream world”. And of course, more than a little angry at all the injustice and destruction and consumerism and myopia that so many people in this matrix we call the world are caught up in, including myself at the best of times.
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Discovered midnight.pub recently and it’s been very fun to fall into a world of disembodied thoughts by random strangers from all over the world.
ooh.directory is another gem and I’ve already found a few interesting blogs there.
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