I miss the days when my morning session of browsing the web consisted of checking up on sites like Flickr, DeviantART et cetera. I would check my inbox to view interaction on my art, respond to comments, view some themed galleries, and maybe post a new photo. It was easy to visit a site, get caught up, and then put it aside until the next morning, freeing my mind up to focus on doing other things.
But the way social media is these days, with the emphasis on never-ending streams of content, you can't really step away without getting the feeling that you're missing something. And because streams are so dynamic, populated by shadowy algorithms, it's different every time you load the page, and there's stuff you'll never see if you don't happen to log on at just the right time, and satisfy the capricious whims of our algorithmic overlords. User profiles aren't even a reliable collection of their posts and thoughts and works anymore, it's a jumbled collection of reposts and other people's works.
No doubt, all of this is designed to game human psychology with the end goal of any platform being to keep users' eyeballs glued to the screen as long as possible. I hate it. I'm the sort of person who deliberately weaned myself off of broadcast television because I hated feeling like a zombie, sinking into my chair, resigned to watching whatever came on next because it was easier than moving.
I like streaming entertainment because it lets me make a deliberate plan to watch something on my schedule. That's why I hate autoplay so much. I want machines to do mindless tasks for me, I don't want them to think for me - or, more accurately, to pretend to predict what I want when what they're really giving me is what the company wants me to want. I have to be the one in control. I'm nobody's mindless automaton.
I became an artist and a writer and a content creator at least in part because I wanted to produce something of value instead of being a passive consumer. To express my individuality. But now, I feel like social media is exploiting even that in order to create more zombies. And the worst part is that it's so hard to kick the habit because the social interaction provides legitimate value. It's a devil's bargain. You can't ditch the bad without sacrificing the good. Or so it seems.
Isn't there a better way?
