Digital Detox – Stepping Back and See.

Yesterday, end of the day, I did a beautiful rage quit from Social Media platforms.

So what happened?

Because as Thom Yorke says with Radiohead in the track called Packt Like Sardines In a Crushd Tin Box: "I am a reasonable [hu]man."

For the past few weeks, I have had the strongest urge to really get rid of the current mainstream social media platforms. I have had no issue with Twitter since their algorithm kicked wrongly my account out for the second time. For Facebook and Instagram, it has been another story.

Awareness Story, Tribulation, and Release

First and foremost, I felt that I invested time and energy in those platforms so that I wouldn't want to leave what I built up in a matter of years:

• 14xx friends on Facebook and 3 pages managed with between 12x to 38x organic followers each.
• 45x organic followers on Instagram, while I don't follow much of personal accounts and focused more on big brands to observe their different campaigns (mostly Haute Couture ones) and inspire myself from them, or UX/UI accounts to get reminded of tips and tricks at all time, or dancers (I dance too), or visual artists, etc... you see what I did there, trying to stay inspired in my scrolly-mindless moments.

I am well aware that investment of time and energy is a UX hook to make us bond more intimately with the digital product - it becomes more personal, like a part of our story,... But there is more to it for me: I am also an artist - producing electronic music, videos, DJing, and abstract artworks.

I wanted to use social media as a communication and promotional tool.

But it got super messy.

I can't fight anymore against algorithms just to share something personal and simply reach out to people I know. It is insane. I can't do it all. I can't learn how to dance better and share effectively my progress while getting better at branding and logo design; while digging self-development or psychology books and applying discovered principles to my work and day-to-day life; while learning singing riffs and runs; while being willing to use social media in an interesting manner and being slapped back with a perception of big-time failure to reach my audience... my "friends."

If I want to keep up, I need to reduce obstacles in my life and slim down the challenges that I gave to myself.

Bye Facebook.

Bye Instagram.

You've been judged as too manipulative and harmful.

My judgment is the following: those platforms are not uplifting, they are destructive. I think I saw a lecture where Mark Zuckerberg participates, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology . The topic is something like: how to make social media a better place? [edit - 01/23/23]

So here we go: I quit smoking one month ago and now, I take a break from Meta - would really like to kick WhatsApp out too.

Preaching moment: Please let's do a huge migration to Signal. Their IT team is relentlessly working on getting their product better and better every day.

If I can be a lot, those platforms are definitively on the "Too Much" side of life. I'll add a provoking and bold statement: they are cannibalistically money hungry.

Now: What? How? Why?

As said a bit earlier, I stopped smoking a month ago and it is surprisingly way easier than I thought. So let's make a détour there for a minute or two.

I knew I needed a "déclic" to quit properly. It came. It worked.

For the first month, it's no cigarettes at all policy. Nothing. No-thing. N.o.t.h.i.n.g.

From now on, I can bend the "no-no" rule, with another rule. I am allowed, one night/party a month, to smoke 5 ciggies. It can sound silly but to me, it isn't.

A no-rule rule, within a rule: I am free!

The number 5 is between scarcity and abundance.

Up to 3 ciggies, I am still on the frustrated side of the bending no-rule rule. Up to 3, I feel that I can't really smoke freely as I used to. It pounds another ounce of negativity: servitude and despair are served.

4... meh. Just doesn't fit, right? Let's say, not 4 because it is just a lame number. Boooo.

5... oh... Yeah! It feels right. It feels good. It feels neat. The two first cigarettes are a claim of liberty. I am fully responsible and powerfully exempted. I am the master of this smoky soul. So very grooving with this sound of freedom.

But five is tricky still: you can lose the count between two and seven. We are here in the middle of Miller's Law. Or not. But that's where the awareness side of the bending no-rule rule hits.

I can smoke freely. Nonetheless, I need to be aware of each cigarette still. If I don't, I lose my right. It's over. I played the game, can't count, can't smoke anymore. Permission revoked. Over, I failed and go to free-lungs jail.

Another consideration of the bending no-rule rule states that I need to write why I want to smoke and how each cigarette feels. I can again skip and twist that part but I'd rather not because, once again: if I lose count, I can't smoke anymore.

In a nutshell, I allow myself to still sustain exceptionally my old and bad habit of smoking. So I have a direct sense of agency in my desire to smoke. It helps me to empower my will and desire not to smoke. I train myself to chose not to smoke. I trick myself and transfer the desire of smoking into cognitive intricate considerations.

I can tell you: it worked like a charm. [edit - 01/23/23]

Application to S.M.

Same, same. There is, here again, a no-rule rule. I can share on only one platform if I want to share something. It will be on here and in articles only.

It fits what I want to go for: releasing my impulse of sharing something - an attempt to reach some kind of elaborated human connection.

I can really go for it: this is an article. I can try to be as smart as I want in it. I can express myself as much as I love. That's ok. It's an article. At the least, I am really learning something from and with myself. Maybe you will too if you are reading this.

It's like S.M.: by punishing myself, I reward myself.

Social Media = SM.

I wrote only one article because it can be a lot of work and research. But I've made several post thought. It was my middle ground because, secondly, the Linkedin platform is so weird about article creation. It is very complicated to access them. It's mystical even. [edit - 01/23/23]

End. End. End... Beginning?

When something doesn't fit us anymore, it's best to make a change. I ended my relationship with those platforms (Facebook and Instagram) for at least a month (01.23.23, now - the break lasted a couple of months).

In my case, the trigger was to publish on IG a carousel sharing a feeling of mine: being too much - and strangely not enough.

Explanation: somebody told me that I needed to dim my shine because I was naturally too radiant for other people so they felt uncomfortable. At that moment, I wasn't being extra, I was kinda doing nothing actually...

To express that moment, I did this carousel. The pics of the article are from that one. The engagement from that carousel was epically none existent - and here was hitting the feeling of not being or doing enough.

So yeah, here we are. It's Saturday the 2nd of April, 2022: I am writing my really first article on Linkedin. Let's see if I will continue that or not, but I like it.

Digital Detox. Article writing cure.

Too much S.M. is left behind me!

Track Mood

Lianne La Havas - Never Get Enough