Treatise on Logging Off and/or Getting Off That Posting Dope After 13 Years

I’m probably one of (if not The lol I’m self aware if nothing else) most ~online~ mutual that everyone has. During lockdown I was posting so constantly on Twitter (like I would be up at 3 AM my time tweeting shit like ‘good afternoon Indonesia’ like a club DJ hahaha) that it became a running TL joke with oomfs I had at the time. This has been an.. Essay..? Rant? That I have had brewing in the back of my mind for some time now. I’m sure I won’t be adding anything different to the conversation surrounding social media and its place in our lives that hasn’t already been said but! I’m a shitty writer in the sense that I do not read a lot so.. if some thoughts and sentiments are being echoed, it isn’t intentional. These are all my own thoughts, feelings, and conclusions after a short break from everything. I originally planned for this to be one big blog post but it turns out Leaving Twitter and Logging Off Soc Med are kind of two very different things and trying to tie all my Thoughts together into something coherent was getting really long and hard to understand even by my standards, so! This piece specifically is about Being Online and things I learned from logging off entirely. You can read my thoughts on logging off Twitter forever here (WILL BE COMPLETED AND LINKED BACK SOON…). If you read that first, this next paragraph will look very familiar lol.
I’ve always been a person who enjoys addressing my friends as a collective group. Its hard to conceptualize Post-Internet But Pre-Mass Social Media Life if you weren’t there but during the days of Post-Internet But Pre-Mass Social Media Life.. I used to send texts to my friend group as a giant SMS text chain with 15+ people. I would send ‘good morning gangs’ throughout the week, general musings, and Rebecca Blacks Friday as an mp3 file every Friday. I didn’t have an iPhone (and when I eventually did get an iPhone it was a rooted phone and couldn’t iMessage - the most important social signifier that you have an iPhone lol) so all my messages would send as a new group chat every single time that I couldn’t even participate in properly. In retrospect, this was probably extremely annoying cool for my friends at the time and they probably used those chats to talk about how annoying cool I am. This is one of the first memories I have of having ‘fun’ with/on my phone. I’ve always been the kind of person who enjoys addressing a (semi selected) audience and I’ve always had The Posters Spirit. I think this little intro story is important to set the scene of the place social media has had in my life (also establishes that I have troll DNA).

The Silence *insert that one pic of Jaehyun*

It really does feel like that picture after you delete apps and are just sitting with your home screen LMFAO! (If you don’t know the picture I can’t describe it to you because its a screenshot of a tiktok that I didn’t save and pretty stupid - just picture the New York sitting on the bed meme if you are unfamiliar). Not even going to front or lie like ‘oh I was at peace immediately after deleting apps’ because I wasn’t lol. The first week logged off was almost unbearable - there's so much time and so much understimulation in day to day life that we don’t sit with and to intentionally do so is torturous when you haven’t done it in a while. I was going plum the fuck crazy for a good 4 days. Then just going the fuck crazy for 3 days. By day 7 I was mostly over the NEED to post/scroll but the cravings still hit like cigarettes or wanting a piece of candy for those among us who don’t smoke. Even now as I write this up I’m visualizing my first bluesky post and ‘scroll time’ checking up on oomfs hahaha. I even broke and downloaded reddit a little early (but I am hardly social on Reddit, I just like lurking on everyone elses drama.. r/badroommates always reminds me why I don’t have any).
Part of the addiction of being Logged On is the idea that life will be understimulating/mundane/boring without social media. I challenge all of us to learn to live with boredom from time to time. We have lost the art of being ‘bored’ as a society and I’m being so forreal like.. it is actually okay and good to sit with the feeling of being bored and then find something to do. Not just scrolling and reacting to shit but doing something. Particularly something constructive that contributes to a larger goal. I’m not saying you have to go out and change the world in your free time but getting a hobby that you enjoy and are challenged by outside of Posting and App and Screen will do alot for your mental health and you’ll be better for it. I got really into crochet during my ‘logged off’ time because I like having something tangible that I can do with my hands and see the results of my work in real time (its been a hobby of mine since 2019 when my friend in college showed me how to make a slipknot and chain and gave me my first hook and yarn. Unfortunately Posting and App and Screen took up all my Creation time so I really fell out of practice in 2024).
You don’t have to get into crochet, lol, thats just me giving background but! It is soooo easy to fall into literally any hobby nowadays. YouTube is a fantastic resource for researching any craft or speciality skill (right now I’ve been getting into birdwatching and raising domestic ducks and quail? Don’t know why). Hobbies are good for you! From a quick google search I found a 2023 scientific study that suggests having a hobby is good for not only your mood but overall health (they asked 93K+ people with chronic conditions over the age of 65 from 16 countries over 4-8 years anf found that the people who had hobbies reported better health, more happiness, higher life satisfaction, and fewer symptoms of depression). The study is just observational but I think its interesting and the science part of this brings me to another medical/scientific concept that I wanted to cover!

Mild Cognitive Impairment and YOU!

I’m starting to think that getting different information presented in a 24/7 loop that you can access anytime (even if the information is as low stakes as ‘lol thing funny’ or ‘what's going on with my favorite band/video game today?’) is giving everyone mild forms of brain damage (varying in severity from person to person). I’m literally not even being funny or facetious when I say this. I went to the Mayo Clinic website to be sure that what I said is what I meant. Symptoms of ‘mild cognitive impairment’ (also known as MCI) can include:

Mild cognitive impairment is the “in between” stage between ‘typical’ (we are not here to discuss neurodivergence today…) thinking skills and dementia. If any of the above bullet points sound like something you’re struggling with daily (I was!) - this may be your sign to get off that phone for a month too. MCI can often be reversed if the underlying cause is treatable, if it's the phone for you it would be an adjustment in your lifestyle - it's as simple (or.. hard) as that! I didn’t realize the ‘close app. Understimulated. Can’t focus on shit I want to do outside of App. Back to app.’ loop that I struggled with daily for 5 years was MCI until day 4 no posting when I was like “I feel like something medical is happening to me…” but it is a real thing that can happen to you if you don’t regulate how much app stimulation that you’re getting!. The constant churn of 24/7 SHIT HAPPENING LIVE NOW RIGHT NOW!!!! was turning my brain into tapioca pudding lol. I could feel my synapses just rotting away by the day/hour/minute I spent scrolling and reacting to shit without pausing to think first. And I wanted to change and stop that cycle of mental torture and decline for a long time but it never went further than just wanting to do it until recently.

Being Online vs Chronic Posting

When people throw the scathing accusation of a person being “chronically online” its like ooo burn.. wait…… what the fuck does that mean? Are you not also frequently online yourself to even be having this debate? Lol. Like I said earlier, everyone defines being online and being chronically online as something different in their own mind. I think that Being Online is very different from being a Chronic Poster. To me, “Being Online” is as simple as using the internet in any capacity. A bit deeper than simply using a computer but not by much as most computer activities are done online.
Being a Chronic Poster is what I imagine people mean when they say ‘chronically online (derogatory)’. Chronic Posting is eponymous (meaning that the meaning is in the name - thanks dictionary.com!) If you post frequently, like on an hourly basis, you are a Chronic Poster. I don’t think this is inherently derogatory!!!! This part of the essay isn’t going to be me finger wagging and shaming anybody who posts a lot (that was literally JUST me like 50 days ago lol) but it will be a warning about things you don’t consider when you’re a chronic poster. It can be really dangerous for your brain and privacy/personal security.
Social media grooms your brain not only to consume but to react to constant stimuli. You’re not just reading news, you’re REACTING to the news and other peoples reactions to the news. That's an entirely different mental process than learning something. ‘Learn how to sit back and observe’ is so much more than a stupid meme… you are ALWAYS reacting to something happening when you’re Logged In and Posting and you HAVE to intentionally sit back and observe because everything does not need a reaction. In fact the whole constant reaction cycle is incredibly mentally and emotionally exhausting and you don’t realize how much so until you walk away. I flipped through my journal entries that I was making in lieu of posting and on March 4th I wrote: “Learning how to sit back and observe like never before like its nuts. Some thoughts shouldn’t be shared at times..”
On the online safety portion… microblogging specifically is very dangerous and I think its by design that all social media is a microblogging platform nowadays. When you microblog you’re not intentionally sitting and thinking ‘okay. This blog post will be about x topic’, you’re just rapid fire talking about any subject at all throughout your day. And when you’re posting about your day and opinions.. you are giving a social media company/law enforcement/the government the right (and REALLY easy access!!!!!) to your day to day thoughts and opinions. A full detailed dataset on what makes you, YOU! Your phrases, your reaction videos, your quirks, your likes and dislikes, your keyboard smashes, where you work, where you live.. everything becomes public knowledge and private property (that you don't even own and that can be removed at a moments notice!!!) Unfortunately that is the reality of what posting is and what it means.
We (ESPECIALLY LEFTISTS AND MINORITIES!!!!) have got to learn to SHUT THE FUCK UP ONLINE! Stop handing these people the playbook on vulnerable populations. There is no tech/social media company that isn’t fascist and white supremacist by design (and yes this includes the ‘good’ ones like bluesky and youtube). Start a paper journal. Write it in the notes app and delete it. Text a friend. Download a journaling app. Please for your own safety and freedom, do not share overly personal or overly political things on the internet. There is no need to do this at all and there is plenty to post about without making an extremely personal or political point. I have regressed a bit on this after returning to social media for a month, unfortunately, but I’m about to be back to being mute on a lot of shit after this is posted. As I just said in the previous paragraph… everything doesn’t need or even deserve your reaction. Especially a reaction that can be linked back to the day, time, and location that you said it. If it's truly controversial or private, you should keep it analog and untrackable (texts and private account posts can still be tracked btw). I really wish bluesky had private accounts because I’m very over posting to an open audience (and I post this alot on bluesky hahaha). Its unsafe and doesn’t really satisfy me any longer…. I just want to talk to my mutuals. Speaking of talking to mutuals… thats a great lead to the next thing that I want to cover!

Gen-Z Loneliness

I was feeling a sensation/emotion in waves all month that I can’t really name.. a sense of grief? A hyperawareness of my own loneliness and lack? My biggest personal reason that I could never see myself being ‘logged off’ is because alot of my friendships exist in a solely online space (particularly on microblogging social media). I know I’m not the only one in this boat so I’m not embarrassed to share that. I did not socialize all that well during undergrad (I was realllllly struggling with autism/masking after leaving high school and people who have known me for 10 years and spent like the entire time of undergrad feeling really uncomfortable and unrelatable to everyone around me until I knew what was going on with me in that regard). Nearly all of my ‘same aged’ friends in my life are people who I have meant online. I don’t think this is a negative thing at all and arguably it is the strongest part of social media. I think we all struggle with real life loneliness but my online community is strong and I do consider them (you?) to be real friends of mine. Distance and interacting in person does not change the fact that we are friends who support each other in our day to day lives.

What got me through that “wow I am lonely and don’t have any IRL friends my age like that other than my two friends and they are both busy so… this is kind of depressing” thought cycle that drives me to check social media was.. simply texting my friends from online. LOL radical concept, right? I’ve rediscovered the joy of checking up with friends a few times a week via texting back and forth and it's just as fun and nice as it was in middle school when I would text like I would breathe. Ever since I joined social media and did my daily musings and jokes on there it felt like I would text my friends 1:1 much less (with some friends we didn’t even talk less we just talked online which is not that different but still.. different). If you’re reading this and want my number to text - please reach out! I’ve matured from being worrisome like in my intro story and will not put you in a group chat haha. I am a double-triple-quadruple texter though as I always have an additional thought to add (you can tell by how I abuse parentheses in my writing lol). I’m better with replying to texts now because I’m on social media less in general (I don’t think it's healthy to set the expectation of 24/7, 365 availability but like.. I’ll reply within a few hours/a day at max). I’m pretty easy to get a hold of. If you feel like you’re getting cognitive damage from social media but like you will be extremely lonely without being on social media, you can just text your friends. ‘Bitch duh’ ass statement but one that never occured to me until I wasn’t on soc med so its just something to consider if you’re in that boat.

So How Did You… Live..?

I was actually not all that offline during my “offline” time lol. I use a computer (3 monitors!) and multiple websites for my daily job but none of those sites are social media - just statistics and databases. Everyone has a different definition for ‘online’ so I just wanted to clarify… I wasn’t going full Amish lol. Just no social media (I did use ravelry to find a few crochet patterns and youtube but I don’t use the social parts of those websites so I didn’t count them). I think it would be really interesting to not use a computer or any tech for a month but that's just not realistic unless I was retired or something lol. I was also reading apnews and insertcityinwhichIreside.com everyday for all news international, national, and local so there's not alot of day-to-day news that I missed, just other people's perspectives on it. When I say I’ve read more news articles about any and every topic this past month than I have in the last 10 years - not just reading the headline and reacting in the quotes (or reacting to someone else's reaction to the headline) but clicking and reading the article. That became my new TL. It was plenty times I would read an article and go ‘damn I wonder what oomfs think of this..’ and that's what made me re-”get” what the point of social media is to begin with lol. To share your thoughts and perspectives with others and read their thoughts and perspectives on things in turn. I think something that holds a lot of people to social media is the idea that you can’t get “real” news from mass media and I don’t disagree but with a trained eye and ear for dog whistles, you can learn to spot neoliberal propaganda for what it is and just extract the information. I think that getting perspectives from others (ESPECIALLY LIKEMINDED PEERS!!!) on news.. which is what we all do on social media all the time btw.. is a helpful tool for the propaganda aspect of mass media because sometimes you do need to see an oomf go ‘this is some bullshit.’ to get your own wheels turning. I completely understand the dangers of relying on mass media alone and agree, I just wanted to give context that I did not actually drop off the face of the planet not knowing any news. You are not out of the loop on world events just because you aren’t on social media (like alot of the time people are posting articles from other news sites which you can just read directly any time on your own). You still get the news without the Oomf Said Inc. Publishing Company of your own timeline. You just won’t know what oomf said. Lol.

In Conclusion...

With the way the Trunk administration is literally using social media as a tool for psychological warfare to make us all crazy, logging off may become more relevant than you think! Seriously. If you have never taken a social media break before I am living proof that it will not kill you fr. You'll be fine being out the loop for a month and your brain and nervous system will thank you for it. Just give it a try for a week, even! I have been ~online~ my entire life and on social media since MySpace so taking a break was honestly really scary at first. Don't let people make you feel bad to be scared about doing it, just do it (if you want to)! I’m going to be defensive to finish us off here (bitches can’t help having a Sagittarius rising!). If you’re here to be a pedantic asshole, irdgaf. A pedantic bitch will never be able to tell me shit and you are my least favorite kind of person. Scram! If you’re here to tee hee at my expense like ‘LOL could never be me that addicted to The App and The Phone’ BE CAREFUL OF WHO YOU LAUGH AND JOKE AT BECAUSE OF THEIR SITUATION BECAUSE YOU MAY FIND YOURSELF…