Digital Regret

I signed back up for Twitter a few months ago. With Elon Musk’s announcement for purchase, I felt FOMO.

I deactivated the first account I created. Somehow, I was sucked into a dark feed abyss of activism and political activity. The energy of Twitter reminded me of an old episode of Star Trek: Next Generation, Skin of Evil. In this episode, a shuttlecraft crashes on a planet occupied by a being who is the physical manifestation of evil, shed from an ancient race to purify themselves.  

That’s how Twitter felt – like that skin of evil.

But I was not yet deterred. I set up a new profile and followed a bunch of wolf conservatories, dug around for dog videos, liked a ton of #thasmin tweets (Yaz & the Doctor FOREVER), found a bunch of writers, Fahrenheit Press, Bari Weiss, and called it a day. I sign in once a week, browse my amazing feed, a few favorite people, scroll through writing community posts, and sign back off.

It's more humane. Less Armus, shed skin of evil that killed Tasha Yar. It’s working. But I sense it is tenuous.  

I quit social media two years ago. Deleted the apps from my phone. I have only a vague memory of posting and signing in as often as I used to do. I want to deactivate Instagram, my final boundary with Meta, but hesitate. It’s my only connection to a lot of people and dogs I love. Edgar’s Mission too. Now, I sign in once a week during my Twitter session or when my wife tells me to look at something she posted.

I used to post on social media all the time. I jumped into the digital revolution without hesitation. Bought the first Kindle. Rendered all my music to the cloud. Stopped renting and buying DVDs as soon as digital options arrived. I started streaming Netflix the week it was available. I donated hundreds of paper books in 2010 and again in 2017. Sold my CDs.

Now I have digital regret.

Around the same time, I started thinking social media wasn’t healthy, I began longing for more rootedness and physicality. A book to hold while I read. A house phone to ring when someone calls. A newspaper delivery in the morning. A garden to tend. Vinyl records to play on slow mornings while I sip my coffee and watch the birds in the backyard.

When I watch movies and television shows set in the 1990s and early years of this century, I’m struck with pre-digital nostalgia. Life before cell phones and social media. I don’t mind the years that gave us eBay, PayPal, and Amazon.

I’m writing this on a laptop. . ADT monitors every inch of the property with cameras and sensors.  I have a Spotify subscription, YouTube TV, and gigablast internet. I’m no Luddite. I don’t want to let of any of that go. But I want to consume things slower. At a more natural pace. I think that’s what this is about.

It's a desire to consume more mindfully and deeply. To not be available and connected. I miss solitude.

Last year, I started taking regular trips to Bookman’s. I read books and then exchange them there, one small effort to slow consumption.

One trip, while browsing DVDs, I remembered buying a new season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer in 2003.  Life was simpler then. (It was also more precarious.) If I stuck to my budget, on the last payday of the month, I could pay rent on my tiny apartment, buy dog food, groceries, half a tank of gas, and afford to spend $30 on books or DVDs. A season like Buffy strained that budget, so I’d trim food spending.  I remember that weekend. The walks with Scully (my beloved golden retriever), the cheap meals that sustained me (Hormel chili, eggs, .99cent pizzas, frozen Albertson brand chicken and hashbrowns), and watching Season 3 of Buffy, one episode after another.  It was the first time I binge watched anything.

This memory took me back to times before, when I’d set the VCR timer to record my favorite episodes of TNG, Babylon 5, Buffy, X-Files, so I could watch them in the evening. I checked out stacks of books and videos from the library.  I had enough to eat, read, watch, and I had Scully It never occurred to me then that I didn’t have enough. I had no FOMO.

Sometime around 2010, that feeling changed. My tiny world felt so much bigger. I needed more. More money. More education. More options. More media.  It wasn’t all bad. I left a job I hated. Wrapped up a series of disappointing relationships and started on a decade long push to prove something to myself and the world. A decade later, I had two Master’s degrees, a cross country move, multiple promotions, an investment portfolio, four books, and an endless list of goals set for myself.  I subscribed to multiple new sources, social media platforms, with actual followings. Life felt very full and connected.

Then, 2020 struck like a prize fighter and I went down. Turned inward. Nurtured the present. Maybe it was the proximity of death that haunted all of us that year. The millions who have died since. The subsequent global catastrophes, war, and instability. Those ten years of expansion and growth were followed by a sincere, heartfelt desire to retract, ground deeper in place, and look inward. I think this happened to many of us.

Before I desired connection, involvement, and engagement. Now, I crave only organic connection, simplicity, and peace.

I often look around my small house and wonder if I could downsize even more. How much simpler could I make my life? I always run the risk of overcorrecting in the opposite direction, like a pendulum, swinging too hard on its pole. I’m only remembering the freedom of that time with Scully in my 500 sq. ft. apartment. Not the empty checking account or inviting myself to dinner at my parent’s house as I waited for payday with empty cupboards.

My urge is to find the space between that time of austerity and simplicity and now, where I am abundant and secure. Walk the line between presence and long-term security. When I was poor, surrendering to the present was easier because it’s all I could afford. I only had the moment I was living in.

I want the benefits of the digital age without the noise. I’d like us to collectively roll back time and never user Twitter or Facebook. I want days like the day I described with Scully and Buffy, where I disappeared into a different world, thoroughly disconnected from this one. I don’t want FOMO. I want there to be mysteries again. I want to wonder what happened to the kid who teased me in high school without the option of finding his FaceBook profile.

Until the past decade, my long periods of disappearing and not responding to people was just one of my quirks. Now I get feedback about my availability.

Last summer, I discovered May Sarton’s journals and read Journal of a Solitude and Plant Dreaming Deep. This sent me into a six month long deep dive into every book of similar topic, including those that extol the virtues of cutting all digital ties and the reasons none of us can concentrate anymore. All those words just told me what I already knew.

I was consuming information faster than I was meant to do so. The world was too big and noisy, and I needed to retract.  

Since I started writing this post, I’ve deactivated Twitter. No matter how much control I try to assert over my feed, it weighs me down like that skin of evil. We’re not made to communicate well in snippets, removed from face to face interaction. The digital world renders us objects to one another, reduces our empathy.

Are you nostalgic for the world before?