#go talk to some real people offline who aren't as chronically online

[iwonderwh0]

Hankcon is indeed problematic as ship, but not for the reasons antis think it is, but because of repeated and explicit death threats from Hank's side.

[uncloseted]

How can I live like before tiktok / influencers (like current-day ones), bizarre trends and oversharing on the internet was a thing like pre-2014. Social media was just starting out then and things were far less weird unless they were on, like, livejournal or tumblr. People openly OVERSHARE now online, film everything in public and strangers, make bizarre content for ads and their personal brands, and it's like there's no divide at all. People can act like weirdos online and no one bats an eye anymore. For the most part, social media was kind of just normal back before all this. You'd post a photo, see your friends' photos, maybe some funny tweets, and that's it (in typically NORMAL spaces at least). Is deleting my tiktok the answer? Deleting all social media and being on my phone less? I don't have FOMO, I just feel isolated because EVERYONE is always on their phones, ffs. Is there an answer to this? I just want to go back to a normal life again before all these micro-trends, bizarre content, and strange ads etc. before I get anymore immune to it. It's to the point where I watch movies now from like 2014 (I time I lived through) and go, "I miss those days." Like??? Do you also feel this way sometimes or know if it's common? I'd love any advice / help. Thank you bunches.

I do definitely feel this way, and I think a lot of other people share that feeling, as well. There's even a name for what's happened to the internet recently- it's called "enshittification".

As for what to do about it, I think instead of asking "how can I live like before social media" a better question might be "what do I wish I was doing instead?" In general, quitting things is really hard, and it's even harder to quit things when everyone around you is doing them. It's much easier to replace them with something else that's enjoyable and meaningful to you. Maybe that means joining more in-person activities, like an art class or cooking class, sports team, volunteer group, religious organization, or some other kind of club/group. For me, I joined a service that sends me on a surprise real-world activity once a month, and even that has done a lot for my feeling of being present in the real world. (If you follow my Instagram, you might have seen the one for this month- it was a pottery class I went to this morning!)

Maybe replacing social media means figuring out which hobbies you'd like to pursue on your own and putting more time into those- reading, making art or crafts, playing video games, whatever feels exciting to you. For me, writing this blog is one way that I replace mindless scrolling on social media, as is going to real-world meetups, doing interior decorating projects at my house, and doing craft projects.

Or maybe replacing social media just means installing a bunch of ad blockers and aggressively curating your social media experience so that you only see the types of content that feel like they're contributing to your life. You could even unfollow everyone except for people that you know personally. I've curated my social media this aggressively, especially on TikTok, and now most of the content I see there is academics talking about their work, people talking about interior decorating, people putting together outfits, and daily vlogs. This is hard, though, because you have to be super liberal with the "not interested" button, and you have to be able to realize when the algorithm is trying to push you down a rabbit hole of outrage.

In general, I think the more time we spend offline and the more we interact with people who aren't chronically online, the less chaotic the world feels and the easier it becomes to realize that social media isn't real life. A lot of the phenomena that seem so common when you spend a lot of time online are totally foreign to people who don't spend a lot of time online, and I think having that perspective can be really helpful.