Cocaine Phone
Same amount of radiation, less amount of brain-rot.
Tl;dr:
Social Media is a drug. And you are the addict(>3hr/day, but can give up anytime. right). The faster you realize, the faster you can manage it.
My solution: 2 phones: a “dumb” black and white with no social-media, and another one that has access to all social media. Or use your laptop’s browser.
Do we like what we like or are we programmed to?
Only in the (street)pharmaceutical, and tech-industry customers are users.
The phones we hold in our hands aren’t just “smart”, they are a trillion-dollar producing device that is militarised.
Phones have a refresh/flicker-rate, usually 60Hz, meaning our screens flash >60 times per second. Unconsciously, it stimulates us.
garish colours that we have been evolutionary primed to get stimulated by, such as blood red for valuable resources like berries and naturally, blood.
attention retention content that is specifically designed to change frames every 3 seconds to capture our attention.
buzzes and great UIs.
algorithms specifically designed to drug us into watching 3 hours of brain-rot.
corpo-states, corporations more powerful than nations and cold-war countries. Why would they not use these tactics to control our minds?
Reading about MK-Ultra, a declassified CIA mind-control project from the 60s, we know it has been tried. Now they don’t need to manually administer that drug to us, we take it for pleasure.
Brave New World or 1984?
BNW is utopic, whereas 1984 is dystopic, but they are characterized by the same story of control.
In 1984, books are forbidden. Cameras everywhere. Clock in and clock out, otherwise, the state will clock you out. Love is programmed and sex is scheduled.
Everyone holds the same hatred towards the regime, but no one does anything.
In Brave New World, book are not forbidden, but people are not interested in them. Soma, the drug that cures any sort of unhappiness, is administered willingly the citizens.
Feeling shitty? Soma. Feeling un-accomplished? Soma. Feeling like you wanna have sex? Soma.
Everyone participates willingly and loves it. You would be the odd one if you didn’t.
Which of these 2 sound more familiar?
My solution
Cocaine phone. A phone that has Instagram, Tik-Tok, X, YouTube, all these digital drugs. To make this functional in our world, I got a “dumb” phone. Camera, WhatsApp, Email, Messenger and Notes. Same amount of radiation, less amount of brain-rot.
I stop all notifications. On my lock-screen, I got no pings. This makes me more inclined to check WhatsApp more often. I still haven’t nailed everything down.
Objections
“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.” Richard Feynman
I still revert to hours of doom-scroll on my laptop. I still wander my email aimlessly on the throne. But I have become aware and the healing process has started.
Provoking you on a thought
Do you actually like what like or were you made to like it?
Pavlov’s dog, sure liked both the food and the sound of the bell rung.
We are losing authentic connection, even small interactions queueing at the supermarket, we are being shaped by our content consumption, since it constitutes the mass of what used to be human-interaction.
We are losing ourselves willingly. If our life becomes a string of 1’s and 0’s, instead of laughing, being angry, loving and being loved, arguing and everything else that one should do with people in the offline world, our choice for fullfilment, happiness and even wanting to stay alive becomes binary.
Inspired by Shaan Puri & Andrew Wilkinson