Social media isn’t social any more: a rant.

Social media isn't social media any more.

It might have started out that way, but it's morphed into something more sinister, a fantasyland of mirrors reflecting everyone's best moments into an echo chamber of imagined perfection.

It's an attention stealing beast, feeding us aspirational content with the undertone of "this could be you", and its evil cousin, "this SHOULD be you". And part of us agrees - you're right, that should be me. And then we feel inadequate, and hopeful or despairing we feed the beast more of our attention, click on links and buy more things to make our lives as easy and perfect as the lives we see on our screens.

And it still doesn't work. The beast keeps showing us more parts of our lives that aren't yet shiny enough, and we still feel lost and broken, and so we stay on the hamster wheel and keep scrolling, thinking everyone else has got it together - what's wrong with me that I don't?

I'll tell you what's wrong with you - nothing.

If you're feeling a little (or a lot) dark, lost, depressed, numb, afraid, scrambling, buying another personal development program or set of glass tupperware containers to try and make life feel like what's promised on our screens… I would argue that it makes a whole lot of sense to be feeling out of sorts.

And maybe you'd like to be feeling something else (legitimate - most people would prefer to feel something from the more peaceful end of the emotional spectrum), but that doesn't mean there's anything wrong with you for feeling caught up in the dark.

IT MAKES SENSE to be feeling dark. Look at the world. Look at past trauma both from this lifetime and generationally. Look at the way the world is set up, meaning folk with sensitive nervous systems and brains wired a bit differently have to work so much harder just to survive. Look at the amount of bypassy ungrounded bullshit fed to our phones daily. Makes sense to want to stay in bed. Forever, if need be.

There's nothing wrong with you. You don't need to be fixed.

And if you're someone who is sensitive to energy and can feel when something is not the grounded truth then it's worse, because you feel something missing when you look at Facebook and think it's you, that you're missing something, when actually it's the rest of the fucking spectrum of human experience that you're not seeing on your screen.

If anything, feeling dark is a sign that you're doing something right, but the trick is to put the blame on the systems that facilitate the feeling, not on yourself. Blame Facebook. Blame capitalism. Blame the attention economy. You? You've got it right.

But… now what? What do we do with this mess? It's not us, but we're still here, feeling the ways that we feel, looking for pathways to something that feels satisfying. How do we tame the social media beast, so that we don't get caught in its claws?

For some, cold turkey quitting works. But for me - I still want to use it to connect with friends. I still want the 'social' bit. And I'm still completely addicted to my phone, and extricating myself from that isn't a priority right this moment. So what to do?

I have a suggestion. Take anything that works. Ignore the rest.

My strategy is to make social media about beauty.

If it's not beautiful and it doesn't make you feel beautiful (or inspired, or lit up, or alive), that's not a sign that YOU are wrong, it's a sign that whatever you're engaging with is wrong for you.

I'll tell you a secret. I spend a fair bit of my time on social media scrolling through my own feed, looking at my own photos. Reliving my own beautiful moments.

I do this because I use my social media not to present a falsely perfect picture of my life, but like a photo album, a place to put photos of cool stuff so I can look back on it later and remember it and smile. It's definitely the highlight reel. If my life was just what I share online, it looks like I live in the creek drinking cacao (honestly, I often wish I COULD live in the creek. Must work on growing gills) and when I'm not in the creek I'm making art, drawing things, road tripping through beautiful places or up to some other amazing thing and it's all sunshine and rainbows and birds.

The highlight reel. The part that back in the day, would have been a slide show projected on a wall or an album on a shelf labelled 'what I did on my holidays'. Those are the bits of my life that make for the prettiest photos. And it's true - I do spend a lot of time at the creek. But it's also true that I don't take photos of the darker bits of my life.

Not because I'm sweeping them under the rug in an attempt to bypass the challenging bits. Not because I'm trying to present a particular face to the world and make out like my life is perfect. But because for me, Facebook isn't the place for my darkness.

Because my darkness can be beautiful, but first it needs to be dark. Spiky. Hard. Confusing.

First my darkness needs to hang out in the dark. I need to live with it and get curious about it and roll around in it and find ways to greet it, accept it, maybe even love it. And then, when I get through it, when it feels softer, less intense, when it's mellowed into a different, sweeter kind of pain, then I can use it as fuel for creating beauty. Inspiration for art, for writing, for song. It's a special kind of alchemy that happens privately. The results - the art, the stories, the insights - those I might share, when they're ready.

Darkness needs its own time and space, it needs kindness and a few trusted folk as a witness, and Facebook isn't much good at any of those things.

Also, in the service of beauty - judiciously unfollow everyone on all social media that doesn't inspire you in a way that feels helpful. My feed is mostly artists making beauty now. Mostly I scroll and feel inspired, awed at some of the things people create.

But… what about keeping informed of world events/ what other people in your industry are doing/ etc?

What about it? There are other sources of news than scrolling through trauma porn in the guise of 'staying informed'. Find a few sources that are committed to unbiased information over sensationalism and get it from there. Get on people's mailing lists if you want to stay connected with them.

For me, social media is about beauty. It's imperfect. I still see plenty of ads that make me feel like I really need to buy a new wardrobe and an exercise app. But I keep remembering that if it's not beautiful, and it doesn't make me feel beautiful, then it's not for me.

And that helps.

I hope this rant helps, too.

The attention grabbing social media beast is hungry, but you can make yourself taste like shit so it doesn't want to eat you.

Fill your mind with beauty, until there is no room for monsters.