Social Media and Quality of Life

Happy Veteran's Day, 'Murica! I've decided to use my day off as a time for reflection. You've lived through the last four years right alongside me, so there's no point in an airing of grievances or rehashing what's turned out to be an interesting four years for the human race. Instead, I offer a summary of socially-distanced porch conversations, thoughts while walking the dog, and random musings while on flights and long car trips. Note that I did not mention thoughts while riding a motorcycle or trail running, because these two items require too much mental bandwidth to safely do any deep thinking (if you're doing it the way I do).

 Get Off of Social Media!

Are you a grown up? Get off social media. Are you a kid? Don't start social media. Seriously, son? You want to be a YouTuber when you grow up? Sorry, buddy, but you need to work on a backup skill because when shit hits the fan, no one ever says, "We need a 4th tier media microcelebrity!" See also, Instagram 'Influencers'.

I highly recommend watching The Social Dilemma on Netflix or reading any of Jaron Lanier's books if you need confirmation of what you're already thinking when you have that moment of clarity on the toilet at work or you ignore your family one room over. Don't be too hard on yourself, they're ignoring you, too. Think about your Thanksgiving this year. If you're going to go through all the trouble to quarantine so you don't kill Grandpa when he comes over, is this what you're seeking? Eight adults and 12 kids staring at their phones and tablets?

I took a break from social media as people became downright toxic in the run-up to the election. What I realized was that I gave myself a gift, which was reestablishing ownership of my life. It may only be a minute here or ten minutes there, but it adds up quickly. I've had a few false starts; it's easy to fall down an internet rabbit hole if you have any sort of curiosity about the world- they serve it right up! However, as I absently scroll Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, I realize I'm just a vacuous consumer, devouring the intellectual equivalent of pork rinds while providing our media monoliths with even more personal information for them to further hone their targeted ads. Next thing I know, my kid fell asleep waiting for me to say goodnight, I didn't get that workout in that I had planned (how the hell does 3 minutes turn into 30?), or the sun went down and I didn't mow the grass. Seriously, how did we all turn back into adolescents? Also, have you ever learned anything transformative from LinkedIn? I question why I'm on that site every time I log in (other than the stupid Social Media theme song of 'if you're not there you don't exist').

All of these platforms have incredible potential for good, but how much crap are you willing to sift through to get it? Choose life (or proper professional publications/websites).

Moderate the News Intake & Take Time to Think

Every time I feel like I'm overdosing on media, I think back to what my life was like before smartphones. If I was on a road trip, I'd listen to local radio or read the paper of the town I was in. On a business trip, I'd watch CNN for 10 minutes while getting dressed in my hotel room (remember work travel?). After that, I'd go to work and work. Nowadays, there's always a 'town crier' in your social media circle, Teams chat, etc. that just saw something on their news feed and now the whole damn office needs to check it out, talk about it, etc, before they settle back down to work. It's like throwing a brick into a duck pond. A whole bunch of flapping and squawking, then we all settle down.

By the way, how much work does our president actually do? He's Exhibit A in the battle to recover our productivity. Dude throws 5-10 bricks per day into the American pond and literally fucks with the productivity of our entire country. We can't go on like this; while our productivity is at historic highs, this level of distraction and thrashing between work and 'house on fire' tweets and news is simply unhealthy. Like 2 pack-a-day smoking unhealthy.

As for what passes for 'news' these days, the flickering images of the TV bypass the 'velvet rope' of your consciousness and rolls unchecked into your brain. The material is covered at kiddy-pool depth and you can't ask the newscaster to repeat herself if you miss a small portion of her story; you may have missed the most important takeaway. 

Remember the Fox News slogan 'We Report, You Decide'? Welcome to written journalism! We all say we have no time to read, but if we ditch social media, I can almost guarantee you'll recover an hour (at least) to catch up on news in a manner more suitable to human beings. Not hearing a 'tone of voice', not seeing a perfectly coiffed talking head giving you that conspiratorial look while reading the news, and not having video imagery placed in front of you to shape your opinion puts you back in the driver's seat when it comes to consuming information. Reading may be slower, but I guarantee you it goes deeper and is held to higher standards than anything a newscaster says. On the page, you can go back and re-read, you can highlight questions, jump on the internet to follow up or fact check, and you get a better quality understanding than the person who has the news read to them by a TV or radio guy.

Finally, I highly recommend 'averaging the news'. I may be overly skeptical, but what we learned in the Navy Nuclear Power Program was to question everything. It's so ingrained in our DNA I couldn't imagine not checking on something before I shared it with the world. Without fail, every time I don't double check something, I end up looking like a fool. I prefer The Atlantic, National Review, The Economist, BBC, Bloomberg, and Andy Warhol's Interview (my guilty pleasure) for most of my consumption. NPR's too whiny for my tastes, and Fox News simply has too much side-eye for me to watch for more than a few minutes at a time. This chart has been around for awhile, but it's still pretty handy and provides some alternatives to challenge your normal daily consumption:

Like ice cream, it's best not to over-consume, but I'm as guilty as the next person of spending way too much time reading too many points of view when I got the gist of the story in the first one or two passes. On that note, I end this discussion with something my 7th grade social studies teacher, Mr. Champagne, taught us; life-changing words as soon as they hit my little 12 year old ears:

• Who's telling you the story?
• What's in it for them?
  
• Why are they telling it the way they are?
  
• Who's paying them?
  

Politics Are a Framework, Not Life.

We're wired to be tribal. Politics have been around forever, but the writings of Sun Tzu, religious texts, and Machiavelli form our modern playbook. Good, evil, righteousness, tyranny, religiosity- all means to an end of preserving, growing, and controlling your tribe. There are countless great authors over the years, but we've been fabricating origin stories and creating shared narratives before the existence of the written word. What we see nowadays is just more of the same.

While we're all impacted by the politics of the day, unless you actually work in politics, it's generally unhealthy to get too worked up about it. Our constitution and institutions do a fairly good job of self-correcting, and as long as we remain alert and engaged (at a healthy level), the sun will reliably come up every morning. Are certain political decisions upsetting? Of course! The best decisions generally leave everyone upset about something. Compromise, or effective compromise is the real Art of the Deal.

One thing I think we all need to ask ourselves before getting worked up into a froth is, "Why is this making me feel sad/angry/gloaty?" "How does this affect my community?" "How does this affect our global standing?" "Will I ever be in a condition where this actually matters?" For that last question, three things that immediately come to mind are the deficit (yes), health care (yes), and social security (yes). Note I didn't mention the inheritance tax. Somehow people take a passionate position on this and many other superfluous 'news' items. What's the likelihood that you're going to get screwed by Uncle Sam for having $11,580,000 to transfer to your gracious heirs? Nearly zero! Why do you care so much, and if you do care so much, why don't you care about that deficit that simply grows out-of-control and screws your beneficiaries along with the rest of the country? This probably belongs in the Useful Idiot section, so let's just jump in-

Being Someone's Useful Idiot Sucks

We've all been there. You take one for the team at work. You defend your spouse because it's the honorable thing to do. You strap on an explosive vest and walk into a crowded train station. Whaaaaat? 

One of these things is not like the other, and he (usually he) is a useful idiot. Examples of the useful idiot abound, especially in today's narcissistic media culture:

• Social climbers and 'influencers' looking for attention
• Provocateurs pushing into highly offensive territory (both left and right wing) to push 1st and 2nd amendment boundaries
• 'Man on the street' interviewees being exploited by news media and vloggers
  
• Apparatchiks in government willing to say outrageous things to deflect and distract from the issues that actually matter
  
• Kids paying subscription fees for personalized messages and early access to watching other kids play video games
• Conspiracy theorists. I truly feel sorry for these guys. If these people ever served in the military or worked as a project manager on a huge project, they'd know that the more people are involved, the less likely any 'conspiracy' is going to be successful. Here are some legit conspiracies, but my question for people that make this their all-consuming pastime: Is QAnon the hill you want to die on? I only know a handful of these folks, but they are literally the most unhappy, wretched people I've ever come across. My worldview is so completely misaligned with theirs that I politely hold up my end of the conversation until I can gracefully bow out, which brings me to...
  

Talk to Strangers

Holy shit, what happened to us? We're Americans! We overshare. We help each other out at the hardware store when we don't work there. We strike up conversations about whatever's on the cover of People in line at the grocery store. We talk for entire plane flights, infuriating our surrounding passengers. OK- I grew up in the Midwest, so your experience may vary. My point is that flagrant racism aside, we generally help each other out and gladly share our experiences with each other regardless of our backgrounds. We're Americans- it's who we are. 

Or who we were. Now we seem to be the United States of Fuck You. We're Crying Libtards and Kleptocrat Racists. We're Coastal Elites and Flyovers. We're Digital Natives and Old People. Millenials and Boomers. Black and White. Maybe it's who we were all along, but I place this tribalism completely at the feet of our American media, and I think it became an order of magnitude worse once social media came about. The biggest losers in this unholy race to the bottom are we the people.

Pre-smartphone, I have fond memories of epic road trips at various stages of youth and prosperity (or lack thereof) and when I would sit down in a diner to grab lunch in the middle of a completely new city, I would almost always find myself talking to the person sitting next to me at the counter. I think it's one of the best parts of the American experience, and now when you walk into that same situation, everyone's staring down and scrolling. Life's best experiences are often found through serendipity, but serendipity requires us to be open to experiencing it and we're all better off when we allow it to happen.

Put down your phone and put yourself out there!