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While cooking myself some simple ramen noodles, I took a look outside my dorm kitchen window and peered into the night to see what I could see beyond the screen wire. It was raining, and through it I could see a lamplight, shimmering in elegance like a full moon, and was casting its light onto a puddle in the middle of the parking lot two stories down.
I sighed and wondered if this is what life is like without social media, without smartphones, without constant distractions. And that's when I heard a ruckus from the screen across from the lot, from a rental house. Just another group of college goers having a blast.
So I just stared out.
I stopped using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram a long time ago - it helps that I generally don't like people knowing my business, or feeling weird when I try to take pics with my phone. I've been using notebooks again, and it seems to help clear my mind a bit without doomscrolling. Tumblr is probably the only SM I go onto, and even then it's just to update my theme and fill in my queue. I guess it helps that the Tumblr algorithm is much more bearable than the Twitter one.
But I do wonder often how life would be like now if social media hadn't become the behemoth that it is today. I grew up inbetween the era of no internet, stranger danger, and the conglomerate monster that is SM. How would things be different? Or the same? Who knows...
I am also giving up using social media all the time. Although, i need SM to do my job.
I long for offline activity as opposed to online brainrot. This place is somewhere in the middle as I only come here one time of day and read and write intentionally (at least, more than other SM)
On a good note: I am writing on Notebooks and reading more, and i'm back here again after two years
I tried Facebook and Twitter, but deleted the accounts in maybe a month, as both seemed like havens for what I'll call "longform aversive eternal septemberites", making such sites dullsville for someone who cut their online teeth on local BBS fora and USENET.
due to the addictive nature of it (SM), life w/o social media is just that - life minus social media. The quicker one leaves it, the longer they stay away from it (for me, forever), and the more things one experiences when not pulled in, distracted by it, is a 100% net positive.