how to shrink a universe

010

I finally deleted my instagram.

After years of going on and off, setting time limits, deleting it on my phone, redownloading it on my phone, I pulled the trigger and nuked my instagram account.

It was so much more difficult than I could have imagined?

Like, I even downloaded all the data that Meta allows you through your account profile. I knew that almost everything I did on the app was saved. There were 6 years of niche memories, funny interactions, and exchange of memes on there.

Even still, it was hard to leave behind whatever sense of community that this application gave to me and the chokehold it had on my attention.

It’s funny because I used to judge people for using instagram. I thought I was better than other people for going down the rabbit hole of scrolling through instagram, like depression expressly delivered via instantaneous comparison to other people’s lives. I used to pride myself on the discipline of my habits, the peace of mind I thought I had without it.

But then I was convinced to download it, and, as designed, it sucked me into a universe of the few hundred people that I have come to know - from my best friends to the people I just met at a party.

I entered the rabbit hole myself, and got rewired by it.

It got so much worse when reels entered the app. I don’t think I really appreciated just how much reels took over my attention. Without warning, it became a regular activity of my every day life. And by regular activity, I mean THE activity I spent the most hours doing each day, aside from eating and sleeping.

In the bathroom. Brushing my teeth. At lunch. At my desk. In whatever small quiet moment, I had a free hit to the brain of stimulation. How dystopian.

I watched another Bo Burnham interview where he said something poignant:

“What is the feeling of walking through your life and not living your life, which is already hell and impossible, but taking inventory of your life, being a viewer to your own life, living an experience but at the same time hovering behind yourself and watching yourself live that experience. Being nostalgic for moments that haven’t happened yet. Planning your future to look back on it. Those are really weird, strange, dissociative things that are, I think, new. Because of the specific structure of social media and the way it dissociates ourself from ourself.”

Down to my core, without warning, I was rewired because of it. Because when you zoom out, your attention is the currency of your life — what you pay attention to becomes what your life literally is.

changing socials

This reminds me how someone once explained to me this concept on how dating apps have changed the dating space. Obviously you can opt in or opt out of using dating apps — if you opt out, you have to find a partner through more traditional methods, whether that be going out or asking your friends to introduce you — you know, the ‘normal’ it’s always been done. However, in the dating space today, even if you don’t use dating apps, others do! And so in ‘opting out’, you are already at a disadvantage because the other people in the space are not engaging like they used to. Because people have hundreds of choices online, they may not go out as much, or have their friends introduce them to you. Opting out of the game means you’re already losing. Even though you don’t want to play, the apps have fundamentally changed the rules of the game and your odds.

I feel the same is true with this instagram thing. Even though I opted out, everyone around me is still in the game: the status game of posting your best and prettiest life moments; the social game of keeping up with the infinite scroll and ‘keeping in touch’.

Even outside of the game, my mind keeps churning on how to live life to impress those 380 some people that used to follow me. It’s a subtle, almost unnoticeable competition of who can lead the most interesting life and present it to the audience.

I can’t even live my life, even now that I’m opted out of the game, without thinking about the audience. How… dystopian (again).

I even felt this idea that deleting my instagram in itself is a signal to my audience that “I’m cool because I deleted my instagram and don’t use social media”. It’s so meta I can’t believe that’s an actual thought that crossed my mind 🙄.

an autopsy of my digital life

After really taking a step back to evaluate, I’ve started to reorient myself to what all this stuff is supposed to be.

I didn’t post on instagram nor did I have a lot of followers. I had about 380 or so. I was usually pretty good about accepting follow requests from people that I knew. Even then, Instagram does an irrationally good job at somehow convincing you that your life contains more than 300 people. But when I really step back and view my life, my universe, as visible from my day to day life, only consists of maybe 20 people, tops? I can barely keep a conversation up with more than 3 people on my phone at once.

I’m a sentimental mf so I really appreciate those connections who I don’t really talk to all too often. I think that was the original value proposal of social media - being in touch with people that you don’t really have to know, but it’s good to know you can find them and reach them when the time is right.

What’s funny is that I deleted my instagram, but to be honest I don’t think anyone gave a singular fuck besides the people I already text. I think that’s the lesson here. Instagram and social media taught me that 380 people give more of a fuck about me than they do. Life is hard enough to worry about as is. What are they gonna do, worry about mine?

Obviously I’m coming at this with more of an antagonistic angle than may be called for. I’ve been asking around, and it seems like some of my friends have healthier relationships with their digital self, how and what they post, and when they doomscroll. But even so, I was bothered by this idea that this concept of doom scrolling had become a ubiquitous idea amongst my friends, kinda like how I feel about smoking in Europe: it’s just something that’s integrated into the day-to-day.

The horizon on my universe is much closer than I remember. This deletion experiment was a dramatic act to show myself that what really matters is the people that are around me. I want to focus on the connections and love that is right in front of me, not those in the digital ether. The connections most applicable to my life right now. The connections that ARE my life. Now with the extra time and attention back, I’m happy to water those friendships that mean a lot to me - ya know, outside the sphere of just sending memes back and forth to each other.

I think that’s what the previous generation can appreciate. They’re not bogged down by digital pressures or brainfog from brainrot. To my mom and dad, their entire life is in front of them. The family, the dinner table, the work in front of them.

I want to live my life more like that.

the next season

So my plan now is to live the next few weeks completely without social media.

I can hone in on the life in front of me. The universe has shrunk to the size of the people I see and text on the day to day. This is water.

I feel like there’s a right way to do the social media thing. For instance, creatives I follow swear by the book Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon, which demonstrates the power of showing your process and stuff meaningful to you on the internet. I want to reapproach my season 2 of instagram with strict intention on where I see myself going and how I show up to the world - both physically and digitally.

I really liked some parts of Instagram! I got introduced to a bunch of cool creators, ideas, and inspiration there. But the cost of it through doomscrolling and taking up my whole life was simply too great. I need to find better ways, more analog ways (like RSS?) to take in the good material on the internet.

time skip

hey! It’s been about one and a half months since I deleted my instagram.

Life has been peaceful. I’ve had a lot less to think about, and a lot less content to fill my days. School has started back up, so that’s been keeping me plenty busy.

In the absence of instagram, I find myself constantly opening my message apps that are on the bottom dock of my phone, hoping to find that hit of dopamine, hint of interaction, and slew of stimulation that instagram gave me. Force of habit, huh?

But I don’t really feel like I’ve lost touch with any of my friends on instagram. I suspect that I’m missing out on some memes they send each other, but at the end of the day if there’s something actually worth bringing up or explaining to me, I trust that the ideas (or funny memes) will reach me one day (if they’re even worth remembering to begin with).

With the extra headspace, I’ve been trying to be more conscious of my thoughts, letting my mind wander, and using some of those 10 hours freed up every week to be more intentional with my motivation on the daily. It’s interesting - now that I don’t have instagram to whip out on short notice, there’s a lot more mental silence to monitor my thoughts.

My last sort of vice in the equation is youtube videos, which I’ve taken a liking to watch while I eat. Now the goal is not to strip my life of all entertainment, but rather I just don’t want to be force-fed content by an algorithm. Many times, I just put on a youtube video because I just want to distract my brain from the silence and it’s the easiest, most braindead option now.

But yeah. That’s it. Life, as it’s supposed to be experienced, I guess? Being more offline now just means I have to be more proactive in doing the things and connecting to the people right in front of me. And that was the intention of this whole experiment.

epilogue

I hope you’ve enjoyed my mini documentation on this little offline arc I’m on! I know that there’s plenty of stories online about quitting social media, but I thought I would document my own story as a contribution to that body of work. To be honest, I’m still the same guy as before. My life hasn’t been dramatically altered quite yet, but it just feels like I have more thinking space. Thinking energy. Thinking silence.

It’s been so fun writing these blogs recently. I’ve been sharing some articles with people that I think would get a kick out of it. It’s becoming a tiny way that I’ve been connecting to people. And I think that’s super cool.

Until next time, friend! Evan