The ultimate digital detox
March 14, 2018 7:17 PM   Subscribe

 
Sounds legit.
posted by brook horse at 7:45 PM on March 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


This is wonderful.
posted by DoctorFedora at 9:09 PM on March 14, 2018


I don't get it.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:14 PM on March 14, 2018


You know, I'm offline right now and it feels great!
posted by Joe in Australia at 9:23 PM on March 14, 2018 [16 favorites]


I am a terrible person, because I found that article featuring a data visualization of the extent to which Farhad Manjoo totally didn't quit Twitter for two months like he claimed in his NYT column utterly delicious.
posted by straight at 10:08 PM on March 14, 2018 [11 favorites]


Well then, why don't you join me in going offline? I really can't recommend it highly enough.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:41 PM on March 14, 2018 [2 favorites]


I get weird looks from people when I tell them my last break from the Internet, nearly a year long, was almost 20 years ago.
posted by Revvy at 12:35 AM on March 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Here's another critique of digital detox articles:
What I find most frustrating about these digital detox articles is their condescending tone. Every piece has the tone of an abusive partner trying to manipulate while sounding perfectly reasonable.

They start off with some variation of a teardown: “You aren't sleeping well, you're sad all the time, you can't focus, you don't know who your actual friends are, you don't go outside.”

Then they give you options, with small digs for how difficult they'll be...

Digital Detox guides are focused on how gross you are now, and what you need to do to temporarily fix this. They never talk about how a few corporations now represent the entire internet, and these companies have turned the internet into a toxin. The underlying message with digital detox is that these companies are inevitable, as is the pain of being online, and it is up to you to learn how to deal.
posted by TheophileEscargot at 1:53 AM on March 15, 2018 [10 favorites]


Well then, why don't you join me in going offline? I really can't recommend it highly enough.
posted by Joe in Australia at 11:41 PM on March 14 [+] [!]


I totally would but I'm offline right now and can't read your comment.

Later, when I go back online and read this, I'll go offline with you. Totally.
posted by From Bklyn at 2:30 AM on March 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


We can be offline buddies! On separate continents and incommunicado though.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:43 AM on March 15, 2018


Oh, I literally forgot paper mail was still a thing.
posted by Joe in Australia at 2:44 AM on March 15, 2018 [7 favorites]


HEY! Where are all the comments? Normally a post like this would have a lot more comments!
posted by chavenet at 5:35 AM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


It's a shame that he had to devour the physical and spiritual essence of the courier during the course of his experiment, but whatever it takes to detox from online-ing is worth it.

(I hope there is a sequel where Newkirk gets walled up in a crypt while calling out “for the love of god, Montresor Manjoo!”)
posted by a fiendish thingy at 6:41 AM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


Off the internet, people may know you're a dog.
posted by Foosnark at 7:23 AM on March 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


in other news, Farhad's history of just really Us Weekly-level hyperbole in the Slate archives pretty much tells you all you need to know about him and likely anything else he'll ever publish
posted by runt at 7:25 AM on March 15, 2018


I know the article is a joke, but I just wanted to say that I had to go a couple weeks without being able to read my social media feeds due to poor signal (Wyoming/rural Colorado). I'd occasionally stop in a cafe to upload a pic or two but I didn't want to stick around to read about the Outrage du Jour. I've unable to fully replicate that at home for extended periods (due to lack of willpower). I don't understand why we often can't do things that are good for us without being forced to. I know it's not just me, otherwise Twitter would be a lot emptier. Yay dopamine.
posted by AFABulous at 8:13 AM on March 15, 2018 [4 favorites]


Every time I read a Manjoo article, I think, "How in the name of God is the best tech writing the NYT can come up with?" His credulity and willingness to cheerlead is just amazing.
posted by praemunire at 9:31 AM on March 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


See I decided to take a break from MetaFilter back in June of 2000, and I stuck to it. I've looked at something besides MetaFilter at least once every day for the past 18 years.
posted by straight at 9:54 AM on March 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


You described much of my life, AFABulous. I live in rural Vermont, without any cell service closer than 30 minutes away, and with poor home broadband.
Many digital detox stories are really about one side of the digital divide.
posted by doctornemo at 10:45 AM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


I took a Social Media Break in December (mostly Facebook for me) and after all those articles I‘d expected to TOTALLY CHANGE MY LIFE. Reader: it didn‘t, even though I‘d call myself a total Facebook addict. I mean, I spent more time wiping the counter after meal prep and such, instead of mindlessly scrolling through Facebook, but that was about it...I‘ll do it for a few days from time to time but honestly there‘s not a big difference in how my life feels, subjectively.
posted by The Toad at 12:20 PM on March 15, 2018


Serious response: I think discussions about “digital detox” that don’t mention the unique pressures and power struggles of the Tr*mp era are fundamentally flawed. When you live in an time where better reporting (and reporting on the context of reporting) is happening on social media than in traditional outlets, then more people are going to look to Twitter for news.

When you live in an era of rampant kakistocracy and gleeful white supremacy while civilization is being dismantled and sold for parts and the disenfranchised are under attack on a daily basis, reading reporting of those issues is going to make you more stressed, probably.

Obviously, just clicks in and of themselves aren’t going to save anyone, and people have to practice self-care. But pieces like Manjoo’s are of a piece with his most disingenuous reporting, that is almost always founded on a destabilizing lack of context or nuance.
posted by a fiendish thingy at 1:16 PM on March 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


Before there was an online, I filled every spare moment with reading. I bought handbags that were large enough to fit Gone with the Wind in them (over 1000 pages). I reread books. I read the back of cereal boxes. Sometimes I would watch television instead and sit through the ads, and the show I didn't want to watch that came on after the show I did. Now, at least, I can carry hundreds of books with me, access (the equivalent of) encyclopaedia, and avoid (mostly) the ads that are designed to make me feel bad so I will spend money. At least now, on public transport (because I have a disability that prevents me driving), I'm not driven mad by the inanities of my fellow passengers. At least now, my lifelong social anxiety (related to autism/ADHD) can be mitigated by interacting with nice people like you guys, when I'm too sick to leave my home. At least now, instead of multiplying numbers, or counting ceiling tiles, I can occupy myself with interesting / amusing / not crushingly boring repetitive mindgames when I am stuck someplace that's scary. At least now, I always have a map and can find my way home (I used to get lost a lot before smart phones). I can travel by myself! I know how much money is in my bank account. I don't need to work against my audio-processing disorder by trying to listen to people on the phone. I don't have to cope with my slower (and messier) writing speed. I went overseas for the first time when I was 48 because of my phone. The rest of you can give up the online world, but for me, it's like I have a world I belong in and can work with and I can see and I'm not stuck behind mottled glass wondering what everyone else is doing. I shall now commence being supercillious because it means I'm justified in being connected and you're not. Nyah nyah. :-p
posted by b33j at 3:25 PM on March 15, 2018 [5 favorites]


I clicked through but couldn't read the article because I'm on a detox from sites that make me disable my adblocker
posted by tivalasvegas at 4:36 PM on March 15, 2018 [2 favorites]


I don't drink alcohol so gave up social media for febfast. This was, for me, Facebook and metafilter. My husband loved it, said he got his wife back, and I felt like I had more time.

What scared me was the muscle memory of addiction - during the first week I found myself on the website before my conscious brain realised at least 5 different times.

Also I really really craved the mindless scrolling to deal with heavy emotions and stress.

There were one or two social events I missed because I wasn't in the loop or wasn't used to remembering events without reminders.

I had a day break (family member with special announcement) and discovered that no one missed me and that FB notification numbers are bogus.

I read more news websites, I read more books. I found that I am perfectly capable of procrastinating without the aid of social media.

Now I am back. I am trying to be more mindful of when and how I engage. Making a habit to click 'most recent' each time I go to Facebook means I break the power of infinite scroll.
posted by freethefeet at 5:33 PM on March 15, 2018 [1 favorite]


Also I really really craved the mindless scrolling to deal with heavy emotions and stress.

95% of the time I am heavily using social media, it's because I'm bored or avoiding something I'm afraid to do. Usually the latter. Just Doing The Thing often quashes the craving.
posted by AFABulous at 7:54 PM on March 15, 2018 [3 favorites]


I am honestly, like, severely addicted to the internet, and to social media (this site being the only social media site I haven't cut myself off from). I compulsively check things, scroll, go back and forth between the same few sites, check things, scroll, etc. To some degree that's a problem with how the internet incentivizes clicks, and to some degree that's just my own obsessiveness, anxiety, ADD, loneliness, etc. But I have a real problem, and I really do want to do something like a "digital detox," because my current level of engagement is a big problem. And I don't know how to do that, because it seems like everyone just wants to write about the fantasy of a pre-internet lifestyle, instead of finding a less exciting kind of balance.

I liked the link TheophileEscargot posted, because it points out how those "digital detox" articles are poisoning the conversation for people like me:
Digital Detox as a concept is common enough to be cliche, with the side effect being that whenever you critique the web, your friends assume you're about to go on some prairie home companion style detox rant: “WHY DON'T PEOPLE TALK TO EACH OTHER ON THE BUS ANYMORE? What happened to DINNER CONVERSATIONS? Kids don't hug anymore because they've replaced hugs with tweets! I don't have a smart phone, I have a SKIPPING STONE that I picked up from the river (ever heard of that?), and I'm soooooooooo happy now.”

Of course no one wants to listen to that, cos that shit's annoying.

Our discussion about the internet has become a binary: you can either reject the online world, or you can cynically embrace it. We cannot comprehend a third way.
So we get this FPP, which is a reasonable response to a ridiculous "digital detox" screed, but it also makes it harder to say YOU want to "detox," or just limit your time online. From my perspective, it seems like saying I want to cut myself off from the internet is going to sound like more of that same self-righteousness, and I've definitely gotten angry comments to that effect. But even that Nieman Lab article taking down Manjoo mentions how shocking it is to see just how much time we all spend online. That's got to mean something, right?

The funny thing is that I actually wanted to do what Manjoo did, and get all my news from paper sources (I even asked about it on AskMe a while back), but it was just prohibitively expensive. So here I am, dodging work on this site. I won't lie, I do often fantasize about living outside of cell range and forcing myself to do other things. Sometimes it's easier to think in terms of total abstinence than to see yourself keep failing at moderation.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:08 PM on March 16, 2018 [5 favorites]


And that's exactly what is so exasperating about Manjoo's article. He did the thing that's hard to do! He drastically moderated his Twitter use without going cold turkey. But instead of writing a possibly interesting and useful article about how he did that, how he decided what to read and what not to whether reading newspapers helped filter or give perspective to what he was reading on Twitter, he decided to tell silly fables about what he imagines it would have been like to get all his news from actual newspapers for two months.
posted by straight at 7:15 PM on March 16, 2018 [3 favorites]


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