Welcome Shane Nickerson back to WWdN! He’s sharing this special guest post with us while Wil Wheaton is at sea. He’s the genuine best.
I think it’s possible that we’re all tired. Tired of hearing from everyone about everything. Tired of keeping track of every friend we’ve ever known on Facebook. Tired of the incessant swirl of opinions from the loudest and most abrasive. Tired of a life plugged into a buzzing hive mind. It’s tiring. It’s exhausting, actually. It’s changed us.
I unplugged my blog this year. 900 entries all about me. I could no longer justify a need to share everything with everyone, and could no longer justify making friends, family, and random people I crossed paths with into content. I wrote to be heard. I wrote for the attention and validation. I wrote because I’m pretty sure I overestimated the need for my voice in the global discussion about every single thing. I like to believe it’s that, and not the possibility that I’ve simply lost the interest and resolve to open myself up to scrutiny. Why bother?
I recognize the irony of posting this on a global forum.
I haven’t missed the feeling of writing something and then waiting for approval, followed by slight disapproval, followed by all the things I’m wrong about, followed by personal attacks. I’ve all but given up on Twitter. Facebook is like an old smoking habit I just can’t seem to kick. “CAUTION: FACEBOOK HAS BEEN PROVEN TO CAUSE FRUSTRATION AND ANGER AT PEOPLE YOU SHOULD HAVE LEFT IN YOUR PAST.” Snapchat is on my phone, but all of it seems to be advancing us to the next lonely stage of wireless interconnection. I don’t know what we’re doing.
This contact…this impersonal contact filled with good-natured barbs and thumbs ups and “sorry for your loss” and “my dog had the same thing :(” and grief that sounds uncannily like self promotion and silly pictures and omg please read this, and you won’t believe what happens next!…this contact is not enough. It’s methadone for a deeper loneliness; a lifelike mannequin for an actual person. And still we reach out from the darkness to the light of a small screen. Favorite. Like. Thumbs Up. Whoa! Too far. You didn’t know him. My opinions matter the most. Hear me. I’m right. You’re wrong. Let’s take someone down. Repeat.
I don’t know what I’m doing.
Stepping away from it all seems a logical choice, although unlikely. I wonder if the novelty of instant connection to everything is wearing off, or if it’s just worn me out.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter at all.
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Timing is everything. These were the thoughts floating around my head last night and this morning. You’ve voiced them with much greater clarity that I could have. Thanks for that. Good to know we’re all feeling a bit exhausted and overwhelmed.
It was amazing to read this in a blog post when I have privately been thinking these same things for several years — and I don’t even belong to Facebook! Just knowing it exists and how it works makes me exhausted and lonely. Thank you for your honesty and courage; I don’t imagine this will be a very popular stance but it does give voice to how some of us feel.
If you think the current form of the social media platform’s social-emotional echoplex is tiresome just wait until it reaches the virtual reality space. It’s goonna be a doozy!
powerful words, and absolutely why I left Facebook over a year ago and haven’t looked back. It was like a breath of fresh air realizing I didn’t have to give my time to people who only make me angry.
Dead on Shane. Several years ago, when I returned from Hawaii to the mainland, I got rod of my phone. I minimized my use of facebook. I got rid of apps, and all the etc. I got a basic cricket phone for job hunting, and used Skype for the rest. I felt awesome. But I also found myself disconnected. From conversations which were occuring only by mass chat. By friends and family who were infuriated that they couldn’t get a hold of me (in their preferred communication style). I switched to writing letters, and got no responses. I am wondering about trying that experiment again. I liked it.
I would have been thrilled to receive a letter from you Joshua. But then I’m old, and that’s how we used to do things. There is an elementary school in the Pittsburgh, PA area that was teaching students how to hand write letters. They used plain stationery and fancy, they learned all the old-fashioned niceties that are increasingly absent from society like invitations and RSVPs, and thank you notes. They wrote letters to students in other schools, and learned what it was like to anticipate/get a response they could hold in their hands and read. There was also an article last year that showed people with brain damage actually showed improvement by writing by hand. Or doing hand craft work, making things, painting things. I appreciate technology, but there are still some things that should be strictly ‘human touch’, and hand writing something to another human being once in awhile is one of them.