my first week of Work featured some truly lovely 14 hour days. as a result, I have not consumed many things of value lately so I would love to hear from you!! I’ve included a collaborate playlist to add to at the bottom :-) & also, send me what you’re reading & engaging with! pls. (you can reply directly to this & I will receive it!)
using my phone as a pacifier
after spending a truly horrendous amount of time on tiktok (around 20 hours a week — literally more time than the credit hours I took per week in college), I deleted the app. not to rehash old points, but tiktok feels like a constant sugar rush for my brain: endless amounts of content custom-tailored to my interests and aspirations, with clips just short enough to keep me attentive for hours on end. in an attempt to futilely reclaim my autonomy from the ByteDance overlords, I deleted the app in a rush of adrenaline. it was honestly a little alarming how similar deleting the app felt like breaking up with a toxic ex, but once it was off my phone I felt optimistic about all the time I would regain, the art I would make, the exercise I’d get in, and the newsletters I’d write (lol).
to my horror, my screen time the next week was the exact same: the only difference was that the time I spent on tiktok was now evenly distributed amidst definitively worse platforms in terms of content quality. I peeked at instagram reels, started watching pretty much whatever video popped up on facebook, and even started scrolling through linkedin for more than five minutes (I’m really exposing myself here), soundly defeating the purpose of deleting tiktok. granted, it was election week and I felt anxious beyond belief, but none of these platforms offered any relief: if anything, the content was to-the-minute anxiety-inducing. alternating between worrying about a trump win to watching covid cases spike higher than ever to feeling very defeatist about living in america, I continued to waste away on my phone — tiktok-less and all.
this entire experiment drew me to a fairly obvious conclusion, but one of those conclusions that I had to reach myself in order to really believe in it: my phone has become my pacifier. I pick it up almost every couple of minutes, reflexively checking to see if anyone texted me (usually not) and if they did, proceeding to ignore them for hours but taking the notification as an excuse to continue scrolling. it’s an activity that feels very mindless and thus harmless in practice, but in reality is the opposite: somehow, absorbing gigabytes of information a month has come to feel not just normal, but comforting in a strange way. while this used to manifest pretty regularly in pre-covid social interactions (the classic ‘pull out your phone at a party to hide the fact that no one is talking to you’ move), it’s been eye-opening to realize that this escapist behavior follows me even when no one is around.
I’m no longer hiding from that creepy guy at the party who keeps lingering around, or from the few moments of awkward silence at dinner — I’m hiding from myself and the thoughts that spring up when I’m not on my phone.
another demonstration of how my phone has become my go-to distraction: people always talk about shower thoughts, and how they have their best ideas while shampooing their scalp and scrubbing their feet (PLEASE scrub your feet. this is a psa). I think a lot in the shower, but also find that I think a lot while cooking, folding laundry, or cleaning. the common factor between all of these activities besides being Clean and Domestic is that I’m not on my phone because I literally can’t be, unless I’m listening to a podcast or something. in those moments of content-less bliss, my mind is actually the most at peace: and the most creative and active.
when I’m doom-scrolling, it’s almost as if the tweets and tiktoks and insta posts replace any thoughts in my head, crowding and shoving into every corner of my brain until it all threatens to spill over in my next frenetic facetime call to a friend. I want to take my brain out and wring it like a loofah, squeezing out all of the things I read/watched/listened/consumed and watching them circle down the shower drain.
sadly, this rant is unlike the other thousands of think pieces on the same topic: it doesn’t end with a neat conclusion. constant content consumption is an embedded part of our culture now: and to write newsletters like this, engage in regular conversation and generally feel like a part of some community (especially during covid), I feel obligated to remain in the loop, forcefully sponging up content until the next moment of futile resistance.
but good news for you! this WILL be my last rant on social media for a while. I promise! I did make it another 50 pages into trick mirror which is probably why this is top of mind for me. back to irregularly scheduled, unpredictable content soon ™
a piece-meal rant on the myriad problems of trying to put a price on reporting and facts
I’d like to flesh this thought out more later, but here’s my no-nuance-november take: the age-old model of journalism, like many age-old models, is not withstanding the inexorable forces of today (tiktok being one such inexorable force).
why? the field relies on archaic rules that look increasingly arbitrary to the casual reader (ap style’s hatred of oxford commas come to mind), and sets up a dynamic where disruption of the standards and practices of the field is seen as thrilling, welcoming, and to some, a sign of authenticity and thus trustworthiness. the problem is, ‘traditional’ journalism ostensibly reports on the truth, which means ‘non-traditional’ journalism oftentime doesn’t: or at least not to the same standards that have been developed over time.
while traditional liberals flock to the nyt and the wapo for their reputable sourcing and writing, their adherence to Facts, and their determination that people will always want to read Facts, a large population of america is not just watching fox news, but also reading breitbart.
the outlets that largely throw caution to the wind, twist quotes, and frame events in bite-sized articles/videos that invoke immediate reactions of fear and anger, are succeeding in ways that your local newspaper isn’t. their appeal comes from the appeal of getting your news from twitter: hot, short takes that are easy to agree with and re-confirm your biases and pre-conceived notions of the world. as local papers get bought out and sold for scraps to private equity firms, the monolithic daily mail model of click-for-money continues to clash with the pay-for-Facts model of the nyt.
again, no-nuance-november + no-thoughts-only-tiktoks mean that I don’t really have any further thoughts besides wow this is really not going to end well and also that you should consider subscribing to and supporting not just local papers, but also outlets using alternative sources of funding (the texas tribune, for example, relies on a number of supporters to provide free, quality reporting for everyone).
the few tidbits that penetrated my brain fog this month
for truly soothing content, you should watch this video. a wife makes her husband and child carefully packed bento boxes every day. nothing deeper here, just good food and lots of quiet love. my brain/loofah liked this one a lot after a stressful day.
you should read/think about this article in the 19th, another ~alternatively-funded~ outlet that focuses on gender and politics: “White women had doubts. They voted for Trump anyway.”
“White women who said they were having second thoughts about the president, citing their concerns about health care during the COVID-19 pandemic, his divisive racial rhetoric and even his general demeanor, ultimately chose to stand by him … Initial exit polling by NBC News this week showed just a 6-point gender gap in support for Trump, and an 8-point gender gap in support for Biden, who won women by 13 points, roughly the same margin as Clinton.”
in a later piece I definitely want to delve more into thoughts about white people, identity politics, and liberalism, but for now, just sit on these damning stats.
you should read “She’s a One-Person Newsroom, But Lee Enterprises Kept Cutting” in wvtf for a truly piercing look at the effect of over-attention on the national level trading off with inattentiveness on the local level. what I mean: people now seem to care more about what happens on a national/federal/global level than what happens locally, and the news business reflects that. a really rough line: “Spinks’ technical title is Managing Editor of the Floyd Press, but in practicality she’s reporter, photographer, layout designer and editor. Each week she single-handedly pulls together the 16-20 page newspaper. And she does it all for $36,000.”
the interviewee, ashley spinks, was fired for doing the interview.
you should add music to this playlist. if you’re in houston, the weather is chef’s kiss, but I can already Sense the cold around the corner… if you’re a little baby like me about daylight savings time (speaking of: did you know most of arizona, besides the Navajo nation, does not do DST ???? like… that was an option for the rest of us?) or generally are looking to ~cheer up~ in the winter, please add some of your brightest and cheeriest songs to this list.
hope you all are wringing the junk out of your brains and staying safe,
christina