Given how interconnected the world has become, happenings in other parts of the world that you're not physically residing in have a way of seeping into your daily consciousness and influencing your worldview.
You take in the information that something fortunate or unfortunate, mostly unfortunate, has happened at some corner of the world.
The mind processes it and begins to make judgments about people, places, and situations you've never directly experienced.
Or if you're like me, you can try to acknowledge it without letting the cat out of the bag, so to speak.
An underlying theme that I've noticed in such situations is humans are more alike than different in their fundamental behaviors and desires.
I think that's a really good thing for the most part. But of course, this also means influencing much of humanity only takes pulling a small and specific set of strings to get the job done.
Offloading Redundancy
I'm thinking of limiting my exposure to the "biggest assets" (read: the platforms that have become essential infrastructure) in the digital world.
The returns have been solid honestly, better than I could've hoped too but I'm starting to experience the law of diminishing returns creeping in.
Which is basically the sense that these digital behemoths like Meta, Google, and Twitter are taking up more intangible space in my life than they're worth.
It's very subtle and insidious when you notice how much mental/emotional real estate they actually occupy in the background.
Of course, I meant I in this case, not you.
After experiencing a wild ride of expanding my horizons in many directions and through various rabbit holes of content consumption, I'm wondering if it's time to step off almost completely from the rollercoaster and find a quieter path, one that aligns more with who I want to be in this hyper-connected world that's only going to get more overwhelming.
They're so many black holes, pulling in attention from every possible direction, shaping narratives out of nothing that makes me question how much control of my own perspective do I have or just a puppet on one of those strings I mentioned.
Who knows, it could be both, and at the same time. I hope not.
The lines are increasingly blurry in terms of where my own thoughts end and the platform’s influence begins.
These platforms amplify the fortunate and unfortunate events from every corner of the globe, beaming them straight into our minds as long as we're plugged in.
We're all wired to react, to feel the pull of these stories, because they tap into something universal which is our need to connect and understand and belong.
More Than A Break
I'm not saying I'll ditch them entirely. Interconnectedness isn't something you can just opt out of when opting out feels like going silent in a conversation everyone else is having.
Maybe shifting more of my focus to smaller, less manipulative corners of the digital world like Hive where the strings aren’t pulled so tightly.
Or stay offline and be peacefully bored at the normalness of everyday life could also be a sort of permanent solution.
Lots to process IRL outside of discussions centered around Hi, Hello, How are you, I'm good thanks, It's a beautiful weather today!
Thanks for reading!! Share your thoughts below on the comments.