Social Regression
There is no point going through an endless debate regarding the state of social, media, or privacy.
It’s ugly.
With modernisation comes aberration in its most vicious form: excess.
It’s faster and easier to destroy than it is to create, people gain more fat than healthy habits, they get more lonely as the world become more connected.
The greatest innovations suffer from our ability to abuse them first & foremost. It will take ages for us to learn how to use wisely what we’ve been given by our most brilliant minds.
Quick question… If we fail to do so, is the output of all this the creation of a new kind of human being? After the Homo Sapiens come the Homo Stultus (stupid in Latin). A real life version of Idiocracy.
Eureka
With technology information & innovation, and all the services built on top of them, we can now learn about ourselves, eat better, exercice smarter, find solitude in meditation without falling into loneliness, enjoy technology without getting stuck into intellectual regression, meet people without geographical boundaries, get access to knowledge without limit.
It is amazing.
But through all this, our exploration field have expanded way beyond our vision. And our inability to see clear through this vast horizon is maybe one of the reasons why we are falling into intellectual regression?
Oops
Here comes the rabbit hole of intellectual regression.
The mechanism is simple. We find what trigger the most universal psychological hooks of the mind, then we develop the features associated to it in order to activate them, we build the products, make people sign-up and use them, and as we realise that our habits of using them develop faster as people abuse them, we keep building blocks of confinement instead of helping them make the most of those products.
As people let those products access their vulnerabilities openly without realising it, their own pandora's box gets wide opened, filling every day with more addictive junk. We go through unlimited feeds of information that feed us like ducks for foie gras.
We became junkies as Facebook became the world’s dealer (anagram of leader).
We got hooked & screwed.
Everybody’s high.
No limit
Greta is the anagram of Great :)
It’s incredible how much people don’t really seem to care about the great cause that Greta seems to serve.
As she gets mad at the grown-ups, the youth is dancing on her words while posting on instagram, buying new fast-fashion pieces and throwing stuff away regardless the color of the trash cans.
Public figures from all sides either despise her or congratulate her as a new toy of distraction and amusement, while more discreet yet iconic characters just commit their time, money and energy to the great causes.
Maybe there is a subtle balance between those two worlds of absolute discretion and ridiculous fame.
To be honest, I am speechless watching news channels being as toxic as some social media companies, although I am not hopeless as media startups like Brut.media (disclaimer: we are investors) are starting to emerge, with a truthful purpose.
Stop
It is so easy to complain and to hate. We could go all day, all night, for generations. That wouldn’t help the world or our karma, on the contrary.
Yet, this is still who we are and what we do, it’s the paradoxical tension of everything that is also great in the world. It feels good to complain, to cry and scream sometimes, to let it go, to openly express our vulnerabilities to the world in an attempt to expel our feelings. There is no way we can and should get rid of our flaws or try to silent our temper.
However, I do believe that we all have a better balance to find. We can better control our emotions, our decisions, our actions. It doesn’t require a PhD in Rocket Science, just a reduction of distractions.
Focus
We don’t need to get rid of everything in a snap and go live in a sanitised area where every piece of technology would have been banned.
Once we find back the joy of living simple moments with our loved ones, reading, cooking, discussing, walking, playing (a board game…), we realise how much we have annihilated all the greatest things in sight to pursue a dream of unlimited, easy, free pleasure through the best online projections of ourselves and others.
It’s not easy to clear our surroundings of all those distractions and focus on what matter, but it doesn’t take much neither, simple life hacks (as we love to call them) can quickly help us:
Realise the beauty of simple things;
Gain better control over our time & actions;
Ultimately be happy as we get rid of too much external pressure.
Axe
First things first, we must get rid of things, leave our phone and credit card purposely at home and go for a walk, give away our screens, forget our computer at the office, put our phone on not disturb mode, go play outside with our kids, make a cake, throw a party… And ultimately build a system against passive regression:
For content ingestion, I only use Twitter, limiting the number of accounts I follow in order to have a feed I love. I have now Zenly & Snap with my best friends only, which means ephemeral content mostly. And I am cleaning up Instagram for & with the same purpose.
Against invasion, I mute most conversations (especially group chats) on messaging apps like Whatsapp or Telegram. I have deleted Facebook and Messenger, which I despise for having failed the world greatly.
Towards better attention, I triple click on the side button of my phone to make the screen black and white, I get in “do not disturb” mode most of the time. I try to find dedicated slots to go through my reading list, my emails, my todo list.
Note that you can cut through the noise while staying super responsive and effective. And it feels amazing to realise this.
End
We have found disturbing to realise how much we check our phones, get attracted by medias that display poorly entertaining pieces of so-called information.
It’s even more puzzling when we realise that we have reached a point where watching the life of others or showcasing what we do all the time seem to become more fulfilling than living ours.
We have become pathetic 👍
However, as we shall enjoy a glass half-full, let’s get rid of those stupid distractions, as much as we can, in order to focus on the things that really matter, while enjoying the unlimited possibilities that technology has to offer.
Don’t forget: eat better, exercice smarter and be a good citizen of the world.
Great Greta & the Snap generation are watching you 🧐
Now, enjoy this great track >>