i’m tired. very tired, and fed up. between the infinite scroll and artificial intelligence, my brain is melting. i’ve never liked social media; for a long time i went without it, and when i caved it was out of obligation, out of pressure, out of necessity, always reluctantly. i was especially wary of tiktok, because i was aware of how far they’d perfected retention: the way of frying your brain with extreme dopamine cycles.
i downloaded tiktok for one reason only: to make videos. and that part — trying to make good content, more educational, not so extremely fast-paced — i do like. but it comes at a price: you have to install the app and keep it on your phone. and it’s addictive. it’s that drug you know is bad and take anyway, thinking that, because you’re aware of how bad it is, you won’t get so hooked. and i notice that isn’t true. i notice it.
it’s been more than two weeks since i posted a video, and even so i go in every day, and i watch a lot of tiktoks. some i like, but it’s rubbish: literally junk food for the attention. my phone use has gone up, on average, between one and two hours a day. and i notice how it affects me. not for the better.
and the thing is, the dictatorship of the infinite scroll is everywhere. you look for a flat and it’s scroll and more scroll of listings on idealista, on fotocasa; it’s terrible, terrible where we’ve ended up. then you try to concentrate on work and you have artificial intelligence, which produces exactly the same effect.
i know i’m repeating myself, i know i’ve talked about this before, but i’m tired. tired of this constant need to produce, to create, to do things. i’ve always thought of myself as a fairly deconstructed man, and i realise i’m not, that i’m just one more. this need to generate, to build, to succeed, to make money, to have companies, to launch ventures… what need is there? and with artificial intelligence, to develop seventeen projects at once, things i don’t even need, that i’m not even enjoying. but you do it because you step onto the wheel. we’re the hamster: go, and go, and go. and the terrible part is that you do it fully aware of it.
it’s not a battle and it’s not a decision: it’s a defeat from the very first moment. and that’s the dangerous part.
i’m going to try to be more aware. not to use my phone before sleeping — even though the last thing i do every night is read, that i haven’t given up and don’t want to give up, reading is hugely important to me; but before reading i use my phone: yesterday, twenty minutes looking at flats on idealista. i wake up in the morning and the first thing i think about is sending claude a message so it starts counting down the five-hour window. and from there, to tiktok, or to whatsapp. i don’t have instagram on my phone; i keep tiktok under the excuse of posting videos.
that’s why i’ve been thinking i’d like to post on more networks, to have more reach — obviously, the more reach the better —, but above all because there are people around me who don’t see my videos because they don’t have tiktok and don’t want to install it. there youtube or instagram would do the job. i’m going to find a way to make these cross-posts from a single platform, without having to install the networks. to see if that way i’m a little stronger and don’t fall into watching tiktok all day. because i enjoy it, yes, but then i think about it and the effect it has on me i don’t like.
but the underlying problem is more serious, and it’s this: we’re leaving the control of these things to self-control. to each person deciding how much time they want, or can, devote to them. and it’s a false illusion of control, because you can’t: it’s designed so that you can’t. you’re a single person, a guy alone on the sofa, or on the bus, or on the metro, using a technological weapon into which billions have been poured in research, where the most brilliant engineers have dedicated themselves night and day to figuring out the best way to keep you hooked. it’s not a battle and it’s not a decision: it’s a defeat from the very first moment. and that’s the dangerous part.
that’s why it can’t be a decision each person is free to make. i’m sorry: i’m in favour of freedom, but this is dangerous. it’s like saying we legalise guns, that everyone has their own and decides, in their sound judgement, whether to use it, whether to keep it in a drawer, whether to carry it loaded or unloaded. it isn’t right. we already see, in some states, how that works: that a kid can grab a pistol and wreak havoc at a school because they have access to it. and yes, keeping things in proportion: a phone doesn’t kill in a way as visually ugly as a gunshot, but it kills too — with addictions, with depressions, with anxiety. it kills. and on top of that it’s the opposite of a gun: there are people who need it, for work, to communicate. a phone, today, is much worse than a gun. we shouldn’t let each person self-manage their own weapon.
and it’s brutally hard. i’m having a bad time of it. and i’m writing this — ‘recording’ it, in inverted commas — on my phone. not to mention how many people you see driving with the phone in their hand. the strange thing is that there are so few accidents for all the people who divert their attention to the screen while driving. you spot straight away who’s on their phone, by the way the car moves; you see it with your own eyes. i don’t know how we’ve got here. but i’m going to try, at least, to be aware.
