Turn, Turn, Turn

Subterranean Coffee

I was laying on my couch this morning, just sort of starring off, not really anything on my mind, dog laying next to me. I was looking underneath a shelf I’d built for some of the antique radios I collect and noticed that one of the brackets supporting it was upside down and I had to laugh. How many months has it been since I put that up and hadn’t noticed that? Radios could’ve fallen, which has happened to me before with an old console, I’d have been upset. What’s so funny about it to me I guess is that, again, sort of the way my life’s been. Meaning it’s been functionally dysfunctional, everything working just the way it should, but without me realizing that something had been wrong the whole time. Then again I also read too deeply into things and really I’m just a dumbass that doesn’t notice things, at least until way after the fact, or until it’s too late.

I got “off” social media yesterday, just had to do it, for my own personal peace of mind while I sort of work things out privately, get back in touch with myself. Profile is still up, photos archived, account still active, didn’t pull the cord completely, just need to get away from all the noise for a while, not feel like I’m just adding to it, or that I’m only doing things just to post about, seek attention, and not be engaged with what’s actually happening to me. In some sense it’s like the new “social suicide” to oust yourself from social media, who does that? But I’ve got to get away from it for a while, tend to this life I’d made for myself beyond how I try and perceive it and portray it.

There’s other reasons I have that have all compounded enough for me to want to jump off social media. First of all for my overall mental health. I know that’s a very “in vogue” type statement that gets a little overused and sort of a crutch a lot of people latch on to, but it’s true. For a person like me that’s already prone to depression and addiction, social media tends to amplify those traits, increases my anxiety and insecurities. The endless scrolling and refreshing, it becomes this sugary mind numbing activity that’ll absorb too much of my time, and it takes away my sense of self control (though I don’t believe in free will as much as I do pre-determination but that’s for another entry). It’s also the intensity of the type of things you see that just wave your emotions back and forth. You can be looking at some peaceful nature video, some beautiful images from space, or some music history factoid, split second later you’re seeing police brutality vids, some performative activism, or some endless political hogwash that usually goes something like “I think this way and everyone else that thinks that other way are fucking idiots and if you think that way, doesn’t matter if we’re friends or family, we’re done” which is absurd. And no it doesn’t matter, red, blue, left, right, republican, democrat, liberal, conservative, they’re all polarized binary ways of thinking (which is doubly ironic for the people that claim to be “non binary”). Sort of getting off topic which I tend to do when it comes to politics but what I mean is the constant flip of the type of media you’re consuming, how can it not effect you, or at very least numb you. Constant sex and violence and memes and jokes and trivialities, one minute they have you laughing your ass off, the next they have you completely scared thinking the worlds gonna end, how does something like that have such power over the way you feel? A lot of the responsibility is on the user, the amount of self control they have and the ability to shrug things off, and it’s embarrassing to admit how much of it had absorbed me, I had to get out, take a break, maybe an extended one. A lot of people can say “it’s just social media, don’t take it so seriously” and lucky for them, I wish I could look at it that way, I really do. But my minds like this pandoras box that’s been opened and it’s hard to look at things the same way again, my only real choice is to opt out, which I’ve done, which i’m doing to a lot of things really aside from social media, I’m opting out of the entire process in which modern people choose to live, I can’t be like that, live this virtual life. I’m trying to get back to the soul of humanity, what it means to be a finite life form on this planet, get back in touch with nature, learn how to curate it and live sustainably, but I’ll get in to all those subjects later, because I believe my story isn’t unique, there may be a movement of people that are trying to do the same thing, but it’s a new reality we live in where the 2 things are at a convergence and we need to find a way to balance it, coexist with it and not forget our humanity.

The final reason that I think is of utmost importance is that I do not support big tech companies and no longer want to participate in them and strengthen them in any way, even if my message goes unheard or unseen. Say if for some reason this type of thing gains steam and momentum, people take notice and it becomes popularized, I don’t want to do it on THEIR platforms. Of course the question is how do you do it? I think a lot of people are asking that question, trying to create “decentralized” social networks but that’s something that’s still being worked out and in its infant stages. The question always becomes though, how do people flock to a thing when it becomes popular that don’t completely ruin it? Seems to always be a thing where something good comes along, it’s fresh and new and unnoticed, then it becomes trendy and overhyped, and finally it becomes coopted by a lot of “influencers” and others that totally take away from the original intent of something. Then marketers try to implant themselves in some way and the whole things becomes “brought to you by Starbucks and the good people at Pfizer!” I’m not trying to sound like I have delusions of grandeur here, I haven’t happened upon some great things or created some new technology, I’m not some computer scientist geek, I’m just a guy that’s completely disillusioned and disenfranchised from the entire process of online communication. I already know the way of things, and these type things are only gaining in their dominance of mass media communications and are getting more and more entangled into our everyday lives, it seems utterly inescapable. I also know of the plans for Web 3.0 and the direction of VR and the metaverse trying to be the way of the future. It’s ironic to me how the idea of things to be decentralized are being completely dominated by these huge corporations, which was not how they were intended to be, but people just buy into it. I’d seen the writing on the wall back in 2019 when I first started investing in crypto, I saw this whole thing coming, it’s actually what gave me a lot of my money today, the whole thing is ironic. Not a lot of people saw it then, but I did, I knew there was money to be made and I took a chance, but in some way I was banking on people’s stupidity, knowing that eventually it’d catch on and people would jump into this thing without even know what it was and what it will be used for. But I’ve already decided that that’s not going to be the future for me, I will not be so heavily involved in it, I’m going to have some investments in certain aspects of it, maybe living “off” of it, but I will not be submerged in it, I can’t be. My life’s calling is for other things, namely my art, my writing, and what I want to convey to the world before I leave this planet, let the others see at their own pace or determine what it was I meant after I’m gone.

Although I’m now in “nomad land” I still plan on creating things, writing, taking pictures, making videos, starting back up my podcast “bare bones radio,” plus other things I have in mind that I want to do, I’ve still been on the cusp of this creative awakening and I have to follow it, I just can’t be so distracted by so many other things, constantly checking, wondering who’s seen what, who likes what, or who gives a fuck, lol. I think there’s been this debate in my mind alongside with what I’ve been doing as to whether or not I was going to become more engaged or less engaged into social media, but for now it’s all put on hold while I work on other things. I still have always had this great love and passion for film and video, music and creativity, and I’m still going to pursue it, but I just want to use other platforms in which ways to express it, maybe on here? I have to figure this site out more and dress it up some, but for now, this is where i’m at.

As a side note, I had this great idea today. There’s actually a feature on here that allows you to chose your time and date when you want something you wrote to post, which is great. I’m thinking about writing something that will post say a hundred years from now if this site is still active or if humanity hasn’t been driven underground under some nuclear death cloud on the planets surface. I’m just trying to think about what I’d write about if I knew it wouldn’t be read by anybody living today but by some futures people, what they would make of it if anyone were so interested. It’s hard to think anyone living right now would be reading this at all, let alone some space nerd 100 years from now, haha. Alright, that’s pretty good for today, feeling pretty alright right now, how are you?