Is "getting off social" trending?

On unintentionally recreating the systems we're trying to escape.

People are getting off social media.

You can see it happening in slurries, people everywhere reaching for their gas masks to test the toxicity levels outside. As if we have all been living underground for decades, breathing in the same recycled stale air believing that the bunker of social media is the only option for us to survive in an AI generated world.  

I shared in my last Substack (Making friends.) that my MO is to stand back and observe…people, trends, conversations…and decide in my witnessing of their unfoldings where I stand and to what or whom I belong. I try my best not to rush to take a stance, but rather collect opinions, perspectives and acts of resistance as a way to crack open the aperture of my own inner understanding…to locate my blindspots…and get a sense of what something really means to me, and what it doesn’t. 

I think we can learn a lot from observing each other, observing ourselves, and allowing space and time for those two experiences to harmonize and settle before we decide to move in a direction that feels best. It’s hard though, when perspective has been stripped away and all we’re left with is a lens built of algorithms and trends and little checkmarks beside our names, to know what direction that even is anymore…especially in the constantly shifting landscape of social media.

So, I get how attractive it might be to cancel it out of your life entirely…to join the freedom fighters in their acts of solidarity. To renounce your allegiance to the apps that have come to feel exploitative, unhinged and vexing. I see so many beautiful writers on Substack leading their march and sharing with heartfelt vulnerability their often turbulent and unexpectedly triggering experiences with stepping away from social media in an attempt to reclaim agency over their creative process, to feel a sense of true community with their readership (which has also, as all pure things do, taken a turn to the dark side recently).

I see so many tired souls using their voice as their armor as they take up arms in this march, twisting stakes into the earth where they stand and saying “no more” to the pressures of showing up, contorting into something of value, and comparing our meager attempts at virality to the unreachable successes of others.

But nowhere do I see the unpacking of how we even got here, or what exactly it is that we are all rallying to escape. I see no exploration of the bigger system that exerts its power over us. No critical eye anticipating our opponent six chess moves from now when we are bloodied and bruised and think we’ve won.

My fear is that we’re throwing toothpicks at a monster thinking we’re throwing spears. My fear is that without examining the system we think we’re escaping, we risk reinforcing its invisible power over us. My fear is that we are walking out of one cell and directly into another. 

The thing is, our identity has become enmeshed with the virtual version of ourselves. The genius of social media is that it lures us in under the veil of connection and belonging, while simultaneously keeping us inherently separate. It stands on the soapbox of opportunity and unification, while silently reinforcing the shame we each harbor…the fear of not being enough is the most monetizable human trait, it turns out. 

The friction that exists between our artificially constructed craving for more and our innate fear of lack, is sadistically leveraged against us.

But we don’t see it, and so we scroll.

We play the game, we follow the rules, we chase the checkmarks…we create and consume in predictable ways…we fawn over virality and follower counts as an antidote to our shame. Collectively, we have willingly hooked ourselves up to a dopamine drip directly into our left arm, and a shame drip directly into our right. 

I know this feels complex. And it is. It was designed to be. Afterall, the power of the elite within this system is endlessly recharged by our ceaseless human desire to belong somewhere. To want something more. To seek out higher status in the hierarchy as a means of survival. To compare ourselves to each other - which, by the way, is a neurobiological response we have absolutely no control over. As long as we are human, we will compare.

This in combination with the unspoken promise that you can have all the things that will keep the dopamine flowing, if you sacrifice enough, work hard enough for long enough and don't complain about the working conditions. And if you don't feel good about yourself while you do it? That's a *you* problem, and you should probably work on your relationship with comparison and striving and have you ever tried loving yourself more?

But the anxiety we feel isn’t an individual problem.

It’s a symptom of the system that lives in our very bones. We aren’t innately destined to have a fucked up relationship with money or achievement…comparison or striving. And the idea that we should have better boundaries, balance, and that we really need to work on our relationship with ourselves to feel good about who we are and what we create…are all passive aggressive subconscious messages we’ve adopted as individual flaws. Things that, when internalized, other us, isolate us, and minimize us…keeping us power hungry and willing to self deprecate.

And so, it makes a lot of sense why a lot of us are choosing to get off of the platforms that we ascribe as making us feel so small, burnt out and hollow. We assume by getting rid of the thing that triggers us, we will no longer feel the acidic ripples of self-doubt, judgment and worthlessness feasting on our insecurities. But if you ask anyone who has taken this step, you’ll hear many renditions of the same experience: “I wish I could tell you that it felt good, but I can’t”.

The warm glow of bliss we hope will wash over us as we press “delete app” is actually experienced as a crystallization of anxiety. We hoped that in slowing down we might allow for rest to find us…to open space for creativity to flow through us organically without pressure to produce or strive. We hoped to cut ourselves open and allow for the thick black tar of comparison and perfectionism to slither away releasing its grip on our insides. 

But rest and space doesn’t feel good when your very identity is merged with the value we place on productivity, success and visible signals of worth. When we don’t know who we are without a checkmark beside our name.

When we cannot as easily curate the living breathing version of ourselves…and we unintentionally ignite the ember that has burned deep in our belly all this time - a truth that our real life doesn’t feel good enough.

When the cravings for external validation take hold and we see for the first time that this was actually easier to access than self validation ever will be.

When the very thing that caused us to feel so small was also the thing we used to prop ourselves up. How genius it is that these platforms have built in the ability to numb away the pain it creates. 

Initially, the pungent stench of shame can bring us to our knees until we are able to see that our war has never been with ourselves. Even the social platforms, an easy target for our blame around why we feel so terrible all the fucking time, exist within a larger cultural context where not working hard enough is used to invalidate the voices screaming for fairness. We are, in a sense, stepping out of one prison cell into a slightly larger prison cell.

It’s well known that the system works to promote those who already hold a great deal of power, and throttle those who don’t. This is true of every social hierarchy within our current cultural landscape. To be clear, I am not attempting to diminish the hard work of those who have found success online. I know it takes immense dedication to build a following and reach the upper echelon of power online. And I also recognize that the ownership of power does not equate to the absence of pressure, anxiety or internalized shame. In fact, I imagine it’s probably the opposite for many. 

But the simplicity of pinning us against each other in a war of “who can work harder” is a game I’m uninterested in playing. And maybe that’s just a choice that comes with consequences I have to be okay with.

But I can’t help but feel like there’s something super fucked up about it.

So where does this leave us?

Well, all I can really speak to is where this leaves me. When I take in the immensity of what we are all swimming in, it feels complex and overwhelming. Not to mention, the blind-spots therein that I know I am still navigating nip at my heels and scratch at my thighs leaving behind bloody trails in their fight for my attention. That is to say, I have no solid answers…other than this:

I think I’d like to work on understanding where I feel I can ethically, wholeheartedly stand within the system, knowing this is probably going to feel and look different every day.

I think I’d like to commit my allegiance to myself and to the wider community of leaders and poets and creatives…writers and activists and social justice warriors…people finding their voice in a life where they have otherwise been silenced (and those who don't feel safe or capable to do so) …academics and journalists and healers and beautiful souls of all walks in service of each other.

I'd like to speak about what I see with courage and vulnerability, even if no one reads it. 

I’d like to write for the purity of it, while also making room for the part of me that scratches at my insides wanting more from it. 

I think that…when we make room for dissonance to exist between who we are and who we think we should be…the source of our striving becomes accessible to us and we can anoint ourselves into the seat of choice to drink from it or not.

I think that…we all have to choose for ourselves what feels ethically and morally good. And even more than that, I think that we need to be aware of moments when power is shifted into our hands and not become intoxicated by it so we can uphold our ethics despite the seduction of elitism. 

If you feel called to comment, please remember to be gentle with each other. These conversations are big, and hard, and everyone is coming from their own lived experience.

x Laura