“It amazes me that we are all on Twitter and Facebook. By “we” I mean adults. We’re adults, right? But emotionally we’re a culture of seven-year-olds. Have you ever had that moment when are you updating your status and you realize that every status update is just a variation on a single request: “Would someone please acknowledge me?
”

— Marc Maron, Attempting Normal

In a world where genuine love is so defused, social media can eliminate uncertainty. It is the perfect drug that can teleport you into the realm of love and belonging.

But, you and I both know that what goes up, must come down. Like any drug, social media has its steak knife Tuesday come down that is enough to make you call into work and tell the boss you’ve got the nasties.

Let me back up for a bit.

What Love Is

I have never really understood the concept of love. Love was an abstract lie that I thought revolved around sex, ideas, and fantasy. I was great at passing the love on like one of those dudes on the street who give flyers out; except, I was the person with my windshield rolled up, with a tiny gap between myself and him — feeling like a stranded parrot from Madagascar — gently saying, ‘no thank you.’

I struggled to absorb the love that was so clearly given to me.

80/20

I’ve been off social media for the past 4 months. When I say “off,” what I mean is that I have ceased to contribute to the noise surrounding these weird and wacky times.

Initially, I quit cold turkey. When our president announced that South Africa was going into lockdown, I immediately felt an existential panic emerge (as I’m sure is the case with most people) inside me.

I journaled on this angst.

There is a question I ask myself on a regular basis when journaling: ‘What 20% is causing 80% of my worries?’ This is a reverse take on the 80/20 rule, which states that 80% of your returns (on near anything) will come from 20% of the input (and vice versa).

It often helps to determine what your 20% is.

There’s a rock in my sock

I always knew social media was the 20%. Like when you can feel a rock in your sock during a run — you know it’s there, you can feel it, it is trying to yell at you, “get me the fuck out of here, dude,” but you ignore it and hope it magically goes away.

It doesn’t. It gets worse. Soon you’re looking like a twat on the side of the road tapping your shoe, trying to remove the bugger.

Social media was the rock in my sock. It was an identity-reinforcing machine that made love so easy. I was holding onto my precious followers with my last breath.

I was feeding on the last supply of likes like a rat addicted to heroin in a Vancouver drainpipe.

Knowing social media was my 20%, I had no clue what to do next (even though it seems so fucking obvious).

An Extra 3-4 Hours A Day

There is another question I wrote down in my journal which became the catalyst for quitting social media: ‘What if I diverted all that extra energy that was going into social media, into something more productive?’ By ‘all that extra energy’ I mean the 3-4 hours of screen time my iPhone so clearly notified me I was spending on it.

This is the power of journaling. I didn’t plan on attempting it, I just asked the question. Suddenly, as if the Universe entered me (in a non-sexual way), I knew what I had to do.

I deleted Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

While everyone was panicking about the onset of a pandemic, I felt at ease.

I’ve taken a few drugs before (who hasn’t?). But that is a topic for another day.

When I say social media is the perfect drug, I mean it’s the perfect drug for me: for my specific circumstances. It gave me a false sense of love and belonging. It gave me an identity that I clung to like an orangutan.

4 months later, I have gained some insight into the nature of my consciousness. I have never felt more connected — with my mom, with the moment, with my suffering, with my desires — in my life.

You Can’t Keep Track

Social media is an experiment that has taken the minds of the entire world and thrown them into a washing machine that is spinning at 1000 miles per hour — its not only hard, its fucking impossible to keep track.

The very nature of the brain is to constantly compare and analyse. Its job is to understand how we fit into the world.

Social media has made us global citizens — the world is now our tribe. So when we see the smiles from others “having a good time,” we feel left out, scared, and alone.

Those feeling are primal instincts urging you to post another picture or status update, because if you don’t…oooooh fuck, then you won’t get your likes for the day and therefore you won’t get your nutrients of approval.

Eventually, you will starve like a hobo that gets given bread but has a sign around his neck that states: “gluten-free only.”

“Likes” won’t feed you spiritually

What we need more of is not superficial “likes” or comments or better photos or the perfect story.

No.

We need more honest conversations, real work, books, films, sex, truth, vulnerability.

We need more presence.

Because now more than ever, social media is a drug that has tapped into our psyche of uncertainty. Once you realise that “likes” and comments are not feeding you on a spiritual level, everything changes.

Social Media Saturdays: why you must ‘batch’ your time online

It would be pointless to write a post like this without a framework to better manage your social media.

I don’t have all the answers and I’m a regular rule-breaker of my own rules.

But, I have found something that has worked for the last couple of months.

In the 4-Hour Workweek, Tim Ferriss writes about ‘batching’ your email correspondents to a block of time in the morning or afternoon (notice how there is nothing said about checking the number of likes you get the first thing as you wake up ah mmmm?). I love this concept. So I applied it to social media.

Since the initial cold-turkey run, I have experimented with a “cheat day.” I now batch all my social media — similar to the way bodybuilders will shove their faces full of excess calories once per week — to Saturday.

I re-download Instagram and Twitter and Facebook, and I scroll through to see how people are doing (even though I know for sure that what I see online is not what is happening in person), and then delete it at the end of the day.

To throw an ice-cream cone at your feet, I’m not saying that quitting social media was thee change that has led to me feeling an abundance of love and good energy of recent. There is a host of things that have probably compounded to give me the ROI I’m feeling now. But what I am saying is, that like a smoker quitting cigarettes, I think quitting social media has been the snowball that has given me momentum in my life.

You’re probably going to read this and think, ‘shit, there is some truth in this…’ And then proceed to feed yourself with the feed of your feed.

Or you may think, ‘this guy has some serious issues…’ We each have our own unique blend of suffering and vices. This (and food and X and Y) is mine.

If you continue sailing your ship as is, that’s ok.

All I’m asking is that you embrace your newfound awareness (dankie De Mello).