How I Got Myself Digitally-Minimalised and Back to Real Time.

 

 

I think it began sometime towards the tail end of the George W. Bush years, like maybe the day after the 2008 elections.   I was pretty jazzed by the prospect of the first black American becoming president. But there was something else that fueled my euphora.

My Facebook post recorded:  "After four years of wandering in the verbal wilderness, how cool is it that someone with a working knowledge of the English spoken language will be president?"  I had a hard time with George W.  In retirement, he's taken on the trappings of a fairly decent chap, but his presidency was a painful mishmash of incoherent rambling, disagreeable verb tense and "misunderestimating" nonsense.  Yes, I know that's not a real word.  But that's classic George-Speak.  I had to stop listening.  

A Wannabe Boyfriend from the past, immediately commented on the post, a little harshly I thought.  He accused me of gross disrespect (for George W.) and touted a litany of Republican-speak to suggest that I was a gun-loathing, flag-burning Anti-American with socialist tendencies.  Clearly he had not gotten over my refusals to his kind offer to help me pass the college algebra test if I went out on a date with him.  Then an Actual (former) Boyfriend (who was never into quid pro quo dating rituals) took him to task about his reply and off they went like knights on white chargers.  Well one of them, at least.  I stayed out of it but was keenly annoyed when the Wannabe hit Send on a parting salvo reminding me that I was a Libtard of the most egregious kind, and unfriended me.  It felt like a hit and run.  The nerve!

But you see, that's what Facebook has become.  It's less about sharing family news and photos with a select group of chosen friends, and more about sharing opinions, mostly unwanted, to a captive audience who isn't really interested.  It's a virtual Hyde Park Speaker's Corner for all kinds of nut jobs who want to inflict ill-formed, ill-considered and sometimes, downright nasty rants about this politician or that policy initiative or the latest row between Megan and the Royals, or whatever else has made the news cycle.  

At first, I took personal responsibility to right flawed thinking (including citation notes).  Needless to say, I got malign responses right back.  Imho, I found their rebuts of my rebuts bordering on extremism.  I got the distinct impression that the maligner really isn't interested in having his or her opinion questioned.  Especially not by me.  And, I noted the either/or, right/wrong rhetoric with growing alarm.  It seems that the rules of polite public discourse are passe.  

I recall my very first political debate as an 11-year old school girl.  I had to argue the Liberal Party line and had a crush on then Lib party leader, Jeremy Thorpe who was the It Boy of party politics.  As it turned out, he scandalized the British political scene when he was accused of hiring a hitman to take out a former (male) lover, who was at the time, blackmailing Thorpe.  That the hitman missed the lover and killed the lover's dog instead made things even more tenuous and Thorpe eventually had to step out of politics.  But I digress.  I remember learning the rules of debate as I prepared - use logic, focus on the important points and never criticise the speaker, only what she says!  Well, today logic has become opinion, focus is gone and we certainly don't speak to each other in the nicest possible way!    I am weary of this constant caustic background noise and scan posts to avoid the tirades of complete strangers and people I formerly considered to be friends.  I steer clear of name-callers and those who see their point of view as the only point of view.  And I tend to mutter things under my breathe.

It was in this funk, that I found Digital Minimalism.

Cal Newport, author of Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World (Kindle edition), is a professor of computer science at Georgetown University.    His bio says that, "He has made a writing career out of unconventional advice to students."   His mission is to shift our focus away from the heavy use of social media towards a more considered lifestyle that chooses the real over the virtual.  The fact that he also lives in Takoma Park, Maryland, my first home as a young married, speaks volumes about him too.   Takoma Park is a haven for refugees, a nuclear free zone and home to more poets and writers per capita than anywhere else in the country.  If you have an ax to grind (in person) or a beef to air (in real time) or want to survive a nuclear holocaust, then Takoma Park is your kind of place. 

Newport offers a treatise on how social media platforms lure and manipulate the user in to clicking Likes and revealing personal information to generate advertising revenues.  It's called the Attention Economy and its purpose is to get you addicted to your social media. Your navigation footprints and your posts become raw fodder for marketing.  In a nutshell, you are being used to make money.

If you've ever wondered why certain ads pop up on your feed after talking at the dining room table to your mother about, say, new curtains for the living room, there's a very good reason.  And if you get that funny feeling that someone is listening to your conversations, it's because they are.  These nameless, faceless people are tracking every click to digitally define your very essence to the ad man so that you are sent only that which they think you want to see and know.  It's like being part of one gigantic focus group every time you get online.  But it worse.  If you extrapolate this out to its logical conclusion, then you may be getting hits for blue gingham country curtains, but the hardened right wing, fundamentalist, conservative, racist, narcissist is getting fed a steady stream of advertising that promotes guns, the preachers and Donald Trump.  Can you even fathom this?  I felt like a complete naive dolt.

Furthermore, because of this steady reinforcement that tells you this politician is going to save America, or that gun is going to keep you safe from young black men, you believe it more readily.   There is nothing else to suggest any other way to think.  It's flattering.   Your opinions are being nurtured and supported by false advertising and un-factual facts, so that you can go on your merry way believing the lies that you believe.  Honestly, what a mess we are in.

Fortunately, Newport not only informs, he instructs.  Like a stern but loving Nanny McPhee, he says that we are victims of, "Mind-device interactions," that we have, "Stumbled backwards" in to a way of life where the race is on for ownership for the bottom of your brainstem."  Yes!  I know.  Shocking stuff.  There's more!  "We signed up for these services for minor reasons and then, "Found ourselves years later increasingly dominated by their influence, allowing them to control more and more of how we spend our time, how we feel and how we behave."

"So what can we do about this?" I wail, recognizing myself as victim to this subtle form of mind-control and not liking it one bit.  Fortunately, Newport offers a plan of attack to reclaim life back from FB, Twitter, Email, Netflix, Farm Hero (my personal vice) and anything else that is eating up time and turning attention away from real relationships, like with family and friends or people, even.  I read on.  "Hit the Delete key," he says,  "Get rid of the apps.  Don't think about it.  Just do it."  And he says this whole thing in such a way that you don't feel foolish.  Well, only a little foolish.   Instead, you feel emboldened and radicalized and ready to delete that app.  You are ready to engage in a face to face conversation with the husband.  You are ready to pick up the phone and call the cousins in England instead of leaving, "Hope all is well" on their feeds along with the latest picture showing you having the time of your life in the back garden.  And you arrange to meet friends on the deck on a warm Friday evening after a run to the food trucks and you don't take a single picture or post a single word about it.

I am one month into deleting social media off my phone.  It was really hard to do. I tried to do it for Lent. I gave Lent a skip this year.  But as my school district went through the birthing pains of planning a safe return to the classroom post-pandemic, I found the FB comments so hateful and derogatory towards teachers (who, let's face it, are blamed for most of what's wrong with society), that in a fit of pique, I zapped FB right off my phone.

It's the idle moments that get you.  Like when you're waiting in line to get the Covid-19 vaccine, and you pick up the phone to check FB and announce to the world that you are in line to get a vaccine for Covid-19 (insert pouty lip pose) and it isn't there.  Or when you pick up the iPad to play a round or 20 of Farm Hero on a Friday night and it is gonzo.  But when you do look up, you will see the family waiting expectedly, and your friends smiling in greeting and all of a sudden you're knee deep in actual conversation with the people you love most, and you are talking about things that matter, and FB doesn't have a chance to manipulate you got a social media divorce. 

And one month later, I have sorted out (as Newport suggests), what I actually use FB for that can not happen in some other way.  Here's the list:

1.

2.

Per the Newport Plan, I have penciled a FB session date into my planner for next Sunday morning over coffee.  But then I forgot to login into my planner and my computer was upstairs and and anyway, I am too lazy to fetch it so it was a couple of days later when I finally got around to wishing folks happy birthday or to "liking" some kid's prom dress.  I'm in control baby!

Then I made a list of apps I use regularly and deleted the rest...including (gasp) Farm Hero.  Next I hit my email account and deleted the junk (4,651 messages) and unsubscribed from a mess of junk mailers.  I ended up keeping a couple of gardening and book sites and Lit Hub, cos I do love Lit Hub.  

So, it worked.  

I am digitally-minimalized and am feeling rather chuffed.  My phone tells me that my weekly screen usage is down by big percentages!  That's a bit of a thrill.

But mostly I am thrilled by the amount of time I have stolen back from aimless wonderings around the internet or trying to beat IP34567 to the next Farm Hero level!  

And about the quality of the conversations I am having with my people.  And sometimes I even forget to take my phone with me on a walk, so I listen to the birds sing and the wind whistle through the leaves.  It's very relaxing.

It's all good and it's all offline!