Oh wait…I forgot: WILD WEST Edition!

Tag: social media

  • I’m tired of the algorithm.

    I’m tired of the algorithm.

    I’ve been thinking a lot about how our lives are increasingly governed by algorithms made by billion-dollar corporations. They’re deciding what we’re supposed to like and only showing us that kind of stuff so we don’t get to broaden our horizons, and there’s no reason for artists to take the risk of making something new. The funny thing is that they aren’t even showing us what we want to see – the algorithm isn’t concerned with us – only our attention – so it shows us what will keep us scrolling (and pumping our data into and buying, etc). Who cares what we want?

    We were eased into this situation, of course. If someone came up to you back in the Nokia discophone days and said, “Hey, let me give you this thing to put in front of your face 24/7 that will show you things that will kill your attention span while influencing you to buy a bunch of crap you can’t afford,” would you say yes? But no – back in the day Facebook, Twitter, and everyone else showed us an actual timeline of what our friends were posting in the order that they posted stuff. There were no influencers, no short-form video, and no constant ads. If you think about it, it’s all an ad. What’s the saying? “If you aren’t paying for the product, you are the product?” It’s 100% true, and you must have been living under a rock if you haven’t figured that out yet.

    I’ve been reading so much about this mess that I’ve had to take a step back from it and focus on reading fiction for my mental health. Since I’m pretty much off of social media now (I do still have Youtube and Reddit – and I have Bluesky, but I had to stop using that one because it’s an automatic path to doomscrolling), I’ve been doing a lot more reading. I subscribed to The New Yorker and The Atlantic, and I’m beginning to regret both because (for obvious reasons) I can’t seem to ignore the politics because the culture pieces I’m interested in are so intertwined at this point.

    I think my personal issue with this comes down to my (and our!) total lack of control over what’s going on – not only in Washington and Silicon Valley, but in our own heads and our own lives. The almighty algorithm essentially takes away any intentionality we had when choosing our entertainment – or our news. Again, it shows us what will keep us scrolling, which means short-form stuff that we’ll either agree with or be angry enough about to interact with (rage bait, anyone?). Youtube is especially bad about rage bait – it centers my focus on how awful social media is and how everything we see is rooted in capitalism and consumerism not because I necessarily enjoy watching that content (and certainly not because it’s good for me), but because it keeps me watching. At this point, I’m overwhelmed.

    What’s funny is that I’m 100% confident that whatever Youtube shows you has little or no commonality with what it shows me. Most of the stuff I scroll through daily isn’t stuff I’ve ever searched for – but it’s stuff Youtube has tried on me, and I took the bait, and now that’s my feed. Yes, I can use one of those browser extensions that gets rid of the feed or use a different channel to refresh things, but whenever I try the latter, I always end up back at my regular feed, scrolling and scrolling and getting angrier and more overwhelmed. This stuff is bad for me. It’s bad for us.

    But I keep scrolling. I don’t think I could give up Youtube like I could Meta apps and Twitter. If I’m addicted to any social media, that’s it. I only watch long-form videos, so I tell myself at least there’s that. We’re so used to being bombarded with information in the form of “entertainment” that we can’t envision a world without it. Sure, reading is great, and I absolutely love to read, but I sure can stare at moving passive entertainment on a screen (with autoplay!) longer than I can stare at a book.

    I don’t have a solution other than to keep an eye on our screen time or ask our friends for recommendations. Under our present cultural circumstances, I don’t know that there is one without the internet suddenly going away, which would shut down the world at this point, so we can’t have that. Which means it’s up to individuals to pull ourselves away from these platforms and algorithms that were specifically created to make and keep us hooked, to be addictive. It’s really frustrating.

    I guess I’ll go scroll Reddit now. I’m pretty sure there are still a few humans over there.

    (P.S. I promise all my posts won’t be this negative – there’s a post I really want to write about two books that are very similar but very different at the same time, but I was thinking about this on my way to work this morning, so here you go. I’ll get to work on the book post soon.)

  • I’ve deleted my Meta, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. Now what?

    I’ve deleted my Meta, Twitter, and TikTok accounts. Now what?

    Yep, they’re gone. At least after the 30-day waiting period imposed by all three services. Turns out I had already deleted my Twitter accounts – Palmer says he remembers me doing it, though somehow I don’t. I was tremendously confused when I tried to log in around 11 this morning (noon DC time) and found that I couldn’t. Whatever, they’re all gone.

    That’s not to say I’m off social media. I’m on Bluesky (and active!), YouTube, and Reddit. I spend a good chunk of time on all three and WAY too much time on YouTube. I need to back off of that one a little.

    So what am I doing with my newfound relative freedom? Cuddling with dogs on the couch, reading a lot, and pretending that the current political situation doesn’t exist. I stopped watching the morning news when election coverage ramped up several months ago and switched to the Weather Channel (America’s Most Trusted News Source – srsly lol). My mornings are a lot more peaceful now sans politics.

    Not that I can avoid politics – it’s everywhere, especially today. Luckily, YouTube knows not to show me much about Cinnamon Hitler (I have no idea where that term came from, but it’s my favorite), but right now it doesn’t really know what to show me at all besides self-improvement and anti-consumerism content, along with my current favorite, planes landing in high cross-winds (my favorite channel for that is Big Jet TV).

    I’m TERRIFIED of airplanes, but I find these landings so fascinating that I can’t look away, and somehow I think I’m comforted that even in these wild conditions, they all make it safely (if bumpily) to the ground.

    As for books, I’ve been reading A LOT. I’ll make a post about what I’ve read so far this year in the near future (though you can get a sneak peak on my Goodreads profile, which, yes, is more social media). Right now I’m reading Orbital by Samantha Harvey and will probably finish it today. It’s a short novel about people on the International Space Station circling above the earth. It’s beautiful and atmospheric. Here’s a quote I really enjoy:

    “The planet is shaped by the sheer amazing force of human want, which has changed everything, the forests, the polls, the reservoirs, the glaciers, the rivers, the seas, the mountains, the coastline, the skies, the planet, contoured and landscaped by want.” (112)

    I was looking at the quotes I’ve saved so far, and taken alone, they all seem bleak, though Orbital as a whole isn’t bleak at all. I guess it’s not hopeful, either, it’s kind of neutral. It reminds you that everything we do, that they do, is small in the end in the context of the whole. Which also sounds bleak but isn’t. I’ll stop now.

    So to answer my own question: what now after getting off of the social media where my irl friends are? Essentially the same thing but with less mindless scrolling and more reading long-form text, which, really, makes me happier. It also makes it MUCH easier to save money because books generally don’t market to us directly, and Bluesky hasn’t added ads yet (please don’t!). It really bothers me how susceptible I am to influence for social media because I like to think I’m smarter than that, but that’ll be another post.

    For now, I’m sitting on the sofa with my dogs. I’ll probably finish Orbital in the next little bit, take a shower, clean the litter boxes (my very least favorite chore but clearly a necessary one), and then I’ll probably drag myself to the gym because it’s too cold to run outside (well, so cold I don’t feel like running outside even though I have the clothes to do it). In short, I’ll still be here. With dogs.

  • Hellooooooo Internet! Welcome to the (new) Wild West!

    Hellooooooo Internet! Welcome to the (new) Wild West!

    If you’ve known me for a while (okay, a Very Long Time), you probably remember that I had a book blog at this very same address. I kept it up for years and talked, often at length, about every book I read – until it started feeling like a job, at which point I quit writing. That was around 2015. I tried to bring it back every so often, but I’d just make a post and then neglect it again. Eventually, I completely faded away into the dregs of social media and (surprisingly recently) stopped paying for hosting, though I kept the domain name.

    So if you found this blog, yes, it’s still me. That doesn’t mean this blog will be what it once was. Probably not by a long shot.

    You might ask what my intentions are, then. Well, tomorrow, 1/20/25, I’ll be deleting my Facebook and Instagram accounts (along with my Twitter/X accounts, though I haven’t used those in years), and while Bluesky is great, I want to be able to share things I do or find interesting – but on my terms this time. I’m paying for hosting, and I own (rent, really, I guess since I have to pay to renew it every year), so data I don’t publicly share isn’t being collect (nor is yours!), and there will be no ads or affiliate links or subscriptions. Which also explains why I’m eschewing Substack.

    I like that people will have to seek me out to find me and that they won’t just arrive here because of an algorithm (at least if I can help it). This is closer to what the internet used to be, and I think we were all better off then. Here, we’re in control, and I like it that way.

    As for topics, this won’t be a book blog, so I’m sorry to disappoint you if you’re looking for a revival of what I used to do. Yes, I will probably talk about books, sometimes at length, as I used to do (I’m definitely planning on adding what I’m currently reading to the bottom of at least most posts). In this Wild West version (a reference to the 1990s internet where pretty much anything could go and it was all still decentralized) of Oh wait…I forgot, here are some topics you might run into (or not, as I see fit):

    • Books (see?)
    • Running! (I tried a running blog at a different domain but gave it up after a couple of posts because I discovered that I didn’t have that much to say about that particular topic, though I usually qualify as obsessed with it.)
    • Dogs and cats (I have two dogs and four cats, so there will, at least, be photos.)
    • Researched opinions on subjects like the decline of social media and the internet in general, rampant consumerism due to actions of social media corporations and the general trend of capitalism, the food and health industry and how it’s so common for studies about human nutrition and health to be funded “secretly” by corporations trying to make us unhealthy for money.
      • I’ll try as much as I can to stay out of politics, but, at least for now, it’s so intertwined that it’s impossible not to make clear which side I’m on once I start talking about it. That really doesn’t matter so much, though, because if you’re here, vast odds are you know me and know where I stand. Also my deleting Meta and X accounts makes it crystal clear. Moot point. Moving on.
    • Whatever the hell else I come up with.

    So welcome! I just got this hosting running and WordPress installed, so expect things to look pretty different shortly, once I get to messing with the theme. There’ll be an email subscription option soon if it’s not there already, and the RSS feed should be working now. If you want to find me elsewhere, follow me on Bluesky: @ohwaitiforgot.bsky.social. Palmer has also started his blog over at intothebigempty.com. He writes some pretty cool stuff over there, too.

    Bye for now!