Praising Skibidi Toilet and More About Leaving Social Media
⋆ ˚｡⋆౨ৎ˚Save to Drafts... is a space for ponderings, musings, and thoughts unearthed from the drafts folder....
It is only a week into my social media sabbatical and I am glowing like when I use to have a 12 step skincare routine. We hear a lot of the same rhetoric about why/how/when to leave social media on Substack and I want to talk about elements that I feel like never get enough air time…
Social Media as Active Addiction Behavior
In Praise of Longform and New Creative Outputs
Missing the Memes and Holding Space for Skibidi Toilet
Refraining from Making the Email Newsletter the Next “Feed”
Social Media Triggering Active Addiction Behaviors
My partner got a new job recently. One that centers their values and beliefs, they work supporting people in the first 30 days post active addiction. We have spent hours pouring over approaches and mindsets that are present in active addiction. I am not aiming to use this term to be inflammatory or capitalizing on its buzz like nature. I really feel, witness, and have experienced dependency on social media as form of active addiction.
While I had seen endlessly “social media” and “addiction” in the same sentence more times than I can count, it was hearing it on the New Yorker’s Critics at Large while on this break that I realized, maybe I have a problem. When discussing whether there was really cause for concern in youth social media use, one of the guest hosts says “I do recognize the patterns of addiction, and I know I experienced those when I am on my phone…” It makes sense too and maybe because I am seperate I can actually let that idea percolate.
Addiction, being defined as having a consistent or intense urge to use a substance or activity that causes harm, means that when I feel bound and like it is the only way of existing online… I am in that “active addiction” state.
Apps designed like slot machines, they exist to trigger the most vulnerable users to create unrealistic dependencies. Artists for their business, comedians, and other working class people sometimes “go viral” only to be stuck with an unreliable revenues stream. The intentional designing of dependency does not get enough air time in these Substack posts sometimes.
In Praise of Longform Creative Outputs
I still try to use apps that give that excitement like my old social media addiction favorite, Instagram. When I try to recreate that scrolling escapism, I fall short, often stopped short with in 30 minutes of what would be an afternoon binge watch. Fro example, there is Youtube shorts where… I am quickly reminded that 50% of our country supports people like Ben Shapiro and I have to exit the app. At night I catch myself as I scroll through Substack where… if I find a rabbit hole to go down I am forced to read long form content. It is just not same way of consuming media like Tiktok or Instagram. I am not fully consumed anymore by a WorldofTShirts like entities that has taken up my afternoon and it is really nice.
I am trying my best right now to share about the media that I interact with on daily basis while also trying not to call it long form “content”. It is the “content” that I am hung up on, feeling like it degrades the hours of work creators spend. I feel like even the most “tumblr blog” like writing on Substack or poorly researched Youtube essay deserves to be recognized as a creative endeavor. In my social media leave, I live for YouTube Essays or Substack writings with much admiration.
Missing the Memes and Holding Space for Skibidi Toilet
There is a crafting that goes into it these online works (i.e. reels/tiktoks or IG posts as infographics) that make them more than a consumable for me. Im reminded of how I got into a playful argument at work with our curator about how Skibidi Toilet was, in my opinion, high art. Even though it was composed using borrowed imagery, Skibidi Toilet still required a creative crafting, the work explores deeper concepts of camp/play/humor and contemporary media. It is a showcase of how we are in time where there is a slow democratization of access to previously gatekeepy and expensive artistic creatives tools. It is also a sign of the rapidly expanding way we come into constant contact with creative media, more than any other generation.
NOTE: I am hoping to write more expansively with artistic analysis on Skibidi Toilet, comment your favorite brainrot word if you would like this.
I would be lying if I said that I did not miss the perfectly curated memes. I left social media for three weeks in the fall and when I tell you that I felt a shift in myself when I came back to see that the “just a chill guy” meme happened while I was gone, I genuinely had FOMO.
Refraining from Making the Email Newsletter the Next “Feed”
Last, I will share that I would like to see people who use this app NOT make their email news letters the new “Feed”. I am directly referencing the ideas of Paula Soulellis “Performing the Feed” where he explores the origins of the “post” and the noise that comes from a feed of them.
Sometimes I open my email and its 3 emails from one Substacker. This person who I will not name is a prominent artist or writer and their primary income is Substack. I understand that I am consenting to these emails when I give my email out, however, the emailing fature of this app can sometimes turn my inbox into a feed. When I started, I was like “why are most people only subscribing to a handful of Substacks”…. now I know. Personally I plan to write more and do the email less. I know that not everyone who writes on here is sending out to the an email newsletter but if you could see my inbox, I am growing tired of the cycle where I like someone’s writing and then having to unscribe because I can do 3 emails in a week from them. #sos
That all for now folks :)
- Boy Nirvana