Youtube is digital opium. Tiktok is digital fentanyl. I suppose Twitter in this metaphor would be cocaine or meth since it's an active experience and its goal is to fuel user engagement by getting people's blood boiling.
As Ted says, "But you will hardly hear about this—because too many people are making far too much money from the dopamine culture."
Most of the S&P's growth over the last decade is fueled by the big 7 tech companies. If they crack down on them, it will likely cause a significant recession and no politician wants to be the one holding the bag when the ride ends.
Of course, if no one cracks down on this sort of thing, we'll have a different kind of recession. See what happened to China in the 19th Century when the British decided to make up their trade deficit pushing opium. There's a reason Xi Jinping is cracking down on video games.
Maybe that’s why TikTok in china is a social end national edifier. Xi knows his few children need proper guidance while the threat to his hegemony ,the US, should be dulled weakened and distracted so our strength as a nation will be gone like grass in the winter.
The interesting thing (at least for us) is that we watch a lot of youtube, but the accounts we subscribe to have content that is...how to say this...meditative? A man renovating a stone cabin in the Italian alps, two Australian sisters running a sustainable farm in the rain forrest. Maybe we're in the minority on this. I do with somebody else owned the platform.
Meditative content is certainly better than hyperactive content. But your experience is still not direct -- it's mediated experience through a device. It's still entertainment and distraction.
I think the point Ted is making is that we ourselves should be renovating a cabin or running a farm or something else that involves engaging directly with life -- not watching other people do that on a screen.
I have to admit that I myself am addicted to substack, and would say that I'm learning from the many posts I read, but it's still mediated experience on a screen. All that blue light and secondhand experience -- life did not used to be like this. Time to think about how to wean from so much online time.
Yeah, I get what you (and Ted) is saying, though in this case it honestly seems like watching a movie (which I hard do anymore because modern film is crap).
I do get more than enough involvement with fixing up this 1827-era house and also the abstract painting I do on a daily basis.
Oh, no offense taken. And yeah, I spend too much time online as well. I mean, I love looking at art on Instagram, but given who owns the platform, I wish that was not so. Even so, I'm really amazed when I see public examples of people addicted to the screen. We live on the Maine coast not far from Acadia National Park and it pains me to see people walking around one of the most beautiful spots in then nation with their head tilted forward, looking at the "portal to the world" instead of the beauty in front of them.
By the way, if you want to check out the stone cabin guy, his name is Martijn Doolaard. We're still working our way through a years worth of his weeklies and are seven months back. The guy is just a wizard of filming and editing.
Yea, I resonate with the point of that we should be interacting more directly with the world and life, and less passively taking it in. It makes me feel sad that I am not doing it, like I am letting my life pass by without actually participating in it. But it's hard for the individual to resist the temptational landscape we live in with all of these platforms. They are just so easy to take in, and active interaction with life is so hard.
If Substack is of any use to it’s users, it must care about them by pushing them to unplug. Does it make any difference if we know what we have to do and nonetheless don’t do it?
Yes they are very meditative while some are inviting as group social experiences that would seem real and wholesome. The content is not so much the issue. It’s the method of participation through a screen. I like these videos too. People I enjoy being in their company doing the interesting things they do but add the vehicle of say Apple vision and the level of immersion would be intense and binge inducing
Yeah, I get that . My experience of this stuff is very much like watching a movie. It comes up on the television screen. We don't have a huge one but it beats the heck outa the phone. I've seen people sitting out in public viewing videos on their phones....aside from being rude af with the volume up, I just don't get it.
The interesting thing is that I discovered the Italian Alp cabin videos not from youtube recommendations but from an ad in The Guardian, with a title something like "Why are 500,000 people watching paint dry?"
Ooh it hurts to hear the truth but then truth and reality are fluid in our not-so-brave-new-world. All of western society is on relative fire and all most of us can do is watch. The transition to full time voyeurism is almost complete.
Wonder what mankind will do when the power goes out?
With regulation. Have you ever wondered why the minimum age for Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok is 13? Did every tech company decide that children under 13 were too young to use their product and not let them sign up out of kindness and compassion? Of course not. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 drastically limits the information companies can gather on children 12 or younger. The reason tech companies made the age limit 13 is because they can't make any money selling the data of children younger than that.
There are other possible regulations too. Europe is ahead on this by a considerable margin. However, amending COPPA to make the age cutoff 16, 17, or 18 would be an easy fix to keep children away from the data collection Moloch of big tech.
What I did find interesting was that America has not ratified the UNs Convention on the Rights of the Child. Whereas Canada has. Is it really because their existing laws more than cover the convention? Canada is working with other countries with UNCRC to try to keep up.
My 2 eldest grandkids each got smartphones when their parents decided they needed new phones and the kids could have the old ones. So if they were stuck somewhere they could call home or for help. They were both in middle school. Both were under 13. And I know that most of their friends had phones too. I doubt it is very different on the other side of the border.
Changing the age would have no effect. Going after Big Tech itself rather than the kids makes more sense. As aggravating as it was trying to haul the kids heads up and away from their phones with persistence, it will pay off.
UNCRC works in many jurisdictions that have recognized that young people may be impacted by technologies differently than adults, be at greater risk of being affected by privacy-related issues, and therefore require special protections.
Some of the most authoritative and current policy and legal instruments that focus on or include provisions for young people’s right to privacy
"FTC is taking another look at COPPA and kids’ online privacy – and we want your insights”. They do say a mouthful but I still do not see any enforcement.
Kids younger than 13 yo regularly have access to the internet and they are nimble about it. Another grandchild could manipulate her dad’s tablet better than he could.
I do believe that it’s not the kids who need the restrictions, it’s all those tech companies who will have to comply, no matter how big a donor they might be.
At 18 a person can vote, enlist, move out on their own, have all sorts of rights and responsibilities and have the ability to decide for themselves how much data they want to share. Upping the age will not stop anything.
That was fun delving into a topic I have not been paying attention to.
Well-said. That last sentence especially evokes something Catherine Austin Fitts said about Wall Street's dependence on illicit drug money, only *a fortiori*.
A friend of mine and I came up with the idea of a platform for 1 minute videos in the 90s long before YouTube existed. My name for it was going to be "justaminute" , the thing my mum used to say to me when she answered and I said who it was, like every single time I called her!
Sadly some things once scoffed at ever happening are coming to fruition like Orwells 1984. Some elements of that and Brave New World have already come into play.
In the first Terminator film the character of Kyle Reece tells Sarah Conner, when she states that the technology for AI doesn’t exist, he replies “not yet, but in forty years it will”. Life imitates art with scary accuracy at times. Like the guy that wrote a novel about the Titanic something like 20 years before it happened.
Interesting, if not unexpected observation to a 64-year-old baby boomer. I had noticed the deleterious effects some time ago. Most younger people likely will not figure it out for some time, and even then, will have to research, or go for therapy to learn the truth.
I suspect my experience is like many others for my age, but I first became aware a few years ago, with regards to how I listen to music. Back in the 1970's I had a nice stereo receiver, a great turntable, (records were affordable!), a reel-to-reel deck and loved listening to music. It was not just the act of listening, but encompassed selecting a record, removing it from the sleeve, cueing it up on the turntable, selecting the turntable on the receiver, and finally dropping the needle. Listening to the music was a prolonged reward that was delivered over several minutes. The reel to reel and starting in the 80’s and later, cassette decks made it easier to put together primitive "play lists" of favorite songs. . We could also listen to music in the car as tape decks became cheaper in the late 70's and early 80's. . .
Things stayed static for several years until computers advanced from room sized behemoths to minicomputers to microcomputers, to today’s personal computers. In an amazingly short time, it was possible to have a computer which was little bigger than a shoe box that could hold one’s entire music library. Today, a small player that is scarcely larger than a postage stamp can hold hours of music. Worse, personal computers today offer software that allows a person to instantly select and listen to any tune they have in their library, or can find on the internet.
For me, over time, I find myself listening to music in a different way. I cue a song, shift to the hook of that song, listen. . .and move on to some other song. Why bother with the whole song that used to satisfy me, when the hook is quick and satisfying?
The reality is that I hate the way I find myself listening recently. As the author notes, the dopamine hook seems to be all that is important. . music has become an instant gratification, rather than a prolonged pleasure. Discovery of a new song is rare, and I find myself getting bored quickly.
Fortunately, I have caught myself and realized what is happening. Migrating back to the older ways of listening, is happening for me, albeit slowly. Life is short, but spending every moment to obtain a 10 second dopamine fix is unsatisfying and depressing.
I had kids very late in life. I am older than you by a couple years and my kids are grown but having them late brought new music into my sphere so I am more tapped into newer sounds. Some of its good stuff and some is garbage. I think the thing that is missing from most new rock is the explosive guitar rifts from the old masters like Clapton, Hendrix and Van Halen. I know there were many others but it seems to be a dying art form.
Yes, agree with this article. It's a big problem, but this ill is also attacking from the other direction too. At lot of people now no longer think an experience is real or valid in itself unless they can record it on their mobile phone and probably upload it to social media for social validation and attention. This is crazy. The real world isn't real enough anymore, it has to exist online instead with likes attached.
At some point tough love needs to come in to discipline this disaster. That means taking the drugs and suppliers away from the addicts and victims. That is going to be tough because they won't want that and there's a huge integrated system to keep addicts and victims in this trap
"At lot of people now no longer think an experience is real or valid in itself unless they can record it on their mobile phone and probably upload it to social media for social validation and attention."
I was recently going through some old pictures of my wife's family. 100 years ago each person had probably 3 pictures of themselves. 1 as a baby. 1 as a child. 1 as an old person. It was nice to see these pictures.
Then I imagined my kids or grandkids going through my photos... 15k (+ another 20k from my wife). Then it hit me... No one will ever go through thousands of pictures. Ever. Not even me! (and I'm the most invested person in my photos)
Anyway... I think the train has left the station and there's no going back.
So true. Both my mother and my father-in-law recently turned 80. I made each of them a video of their lives. They each had a baby picture, one as a grade school student, and their high school senior portrait.
My great aunt, born 1900, left only a tiny stack of photos like the ones you mention - and she was always getting rid of things. I thought it was strange not to save and collect but it was interesting...now I see she was unburdening her self and living in the present. She had a great laugh, could converse on many subjects and most importantly offered her full attention.
I used to not take photos much because of the belief life is to be enjoyed & shared through conversation, not posted online. But I've had a change of heart.
My mother is will be 100 years old in May. Though highly functional, she has vascular dementia, and poor memory of her life and experiences. But photos of her family from before she was born through today keep her engaged and bring her great happiness. She enjoys the pictures we've put on the TV screensaver more than she enjoys most movies and TV shows.
So I snap more pictures of my family and friends than I used to, because I'm not only enjoying my life in real time, I'm taking care of my future self.
It’s nice to hear handful of pictures had a huge impact in all your lives! There’s a lot of beauty in the past where things took time and there wasn’t unlimited cloud storage
Oh dear, I've thought the same. In fact, the rarity makes the pictures of the past more interesting. When we really thought my father was dying, I was tasked by an elder brother with going through family photos in order to make a slide show which has become a fixture at funerals down here. I was none too pleased with this assignment, having little interest in such things nor expectation that attendees do either - and no experience scanning or creating a digital photo collection; but certain tasks fall to daughters. So I set about this. The process revealed that Mother had far more photo albums than I realized (no one had ever opened them since she had haphazardly filled them, not particularly in any order, and put them high on a shelf; as a child I had looked at the *one* then extant because I was the baby, and I wanted to see what the family had been without me, an idea I found strange, and what my brothers had looked like as sweet (!) little kids). There was also a *much* smaller number of longer-ago B&W photos, of parents and of the elders ...
First: there has been some pleasure in sharing certain photos I've come across, some of which my brothers enjoyed sharing with their kids. On the phone. One, the only one, of parents in their engagement period, was quickly dubbed "Angel and the Bad Boy".
Everyone prefers the older photos, even the ones from our childhood seem more interesting, having that vintage photo feel and different cars and clothes and such. And a kind of running theme of our often sullen expressions (you couldn't instantly pick and choose then, take a dozen digital snaps, discard, and ensure that everyone is thrilled all the time). Which now seems funny though it actually reflected a genuinely troubled atmosphere at the time. And makes the ones where we seem happy, even nicer.
They are just inherently more interesting. The ones of the grandparents/great-grandparents even more so. A single photo of maternal grandparents at the time of their wedding (no wedding dress then, you just wore your best dress) - they look like Scott and Zelda, far more memorable than a dozen photos. My staid, respectable banker paternal grandfather looked as a young man, like a street brawler out of a Hollywood movie.
The thing is, no one wants an amorphous mass of photos any more than we want Mother's collection of Toby jugs and teacups and blue willow, so I am trying to cull - realizing the same should be done for my own, mostly from the childhood of my only child, and from trips.
And it's really hard to figure out who or what I am saving all this for. Yet one can't just dump them all at once.
And if you've got a little OCD as I do, it's even harder. For instance, I had pretty periods and less pretty periods, as a child/girl/woman. I thought, I'll keep only flattering photos of myself. But my compulsiveness wouldn't permit me to do that.
My nuclear family was: three kids; there are two spouses currently; and four grandchildren among us. None of us are now close, and the photos are a record that we once spent all our time together, which now seems unbelievable. It might be less poignant and fraught if we were necessarily still in each other's lives in that customary way.
It's almost as though: I've looked at these photos and I am the last person that ever needs to. I am "curating" a small box for each brother; but the remainder seem to be my own black hole to deal with.
Addiction is overwhelming involvement with anything (typically to deleterious result), as a response to the impoverishment of the spirit resulting from psychosocial dislocation.
If by "global" economy, you mean the economy of a few regions of the globe that plunder the rest of it for resources to produce this technology, which is really far worse than any drugs could ever be, then so what?
If so, then let it be devastated, because it must be for anything to get better and the path that leads to devastation is the one that people have chosen, collectively, to take. It is people who form societies and economies, they do not go one way or another for any reason outside of our control. They are not autonomous; we create them.
If there is complete collapse of the worst kind—the war of all for all—it is because the people who have formed these economies and who depend on them have chosen this fate for themselves, despite that they could have chosen differently. Everyone is free to make a change at any time, both those in Silicon Valley who have created this economy and the people who are dependent on it and its poisons.
Internet use only took off in the 90s, social media in the noughties. This is a very new addiction in human terms. So it can be reversed.
I agree with you that it would not be devastating at all to go back to the pre-90s world, especially since these industries are based on exploitation of human, mineral, and energy resources in poorer countries.
It would also mean that governments and tech companies could not reach us with their loads and loads of lies and crap, and we would rediscover that there's actually a real and quite cool world out there (if the government stopped spraying it with chemicals!).
You. can give it the let it play out credo but one never knows where the tracks lead over the horizon and who may fall victim and what may happen consequentially. Not to say we CAN stop it. Given the opportunity we should try but it is now a colossal whack a mole challenge and growing more so as the clock tiks. Given our current Brezhnev level leadership I’m eyeing a farm job so maybe I won’t starve when you have to be a part of the big thing to “survive”.
So true. Take less photos, print them, treasure them, stop the excessive madness...except cats, take thousands of pictures of cats, leave that for the future. haha! But seriously, agreed.
Very true. There are only two real responses to this. One - as you say - cold turkey.
The second is creating a fundamental shift in the incentive driving the platform algorithms. It's simple and comprehensive. Platforms should be taxed according to the self reported well being of their users, with tax credits going to the platforms with the happiest users.
Anything else is putting roadblocks in front of a flood.
"Platforms should be taxed according to the self reported well being of their users, with tax credits going to the platforms with the happiest users."
Absolutely BRILLIANT. I agree with you completely. I'd rather see the entire grid go down, but realistically, I know it's not going to happen. What you propose here is probably the best idea I've seen yet. Thanks for sharing.
Sad to say you're right. I don't go to as many concerts as I used to, they've become so expensive, but I'm astonished by the number of people who watch the entire performance through their mobiles! Live recordings are almost invariably disappointing in that they lack the essential element of being there and experiencing it, of being involved, part of the performance, but that's exactly what these people are doing. I think there's an element of FOMO involved, that by recording the event they hope to pick up on detail they might have missed. It's crazy, because they're missing the whole point. I'm a musician myself and an audience is an essential part of a performance. It's what makes every one different and special, but I despair when I see people watching me through their mobiles. It makes them not present, unengaged, silent witnesses instead of participants. Fortunately for me it hasn't happened very often at all, I'm not that famous or ‘important’ enough for people to want to preserve my efforts. It's ironic that in that wish to hold on to an event, people are actually detaching themselves, distancing themselves and missing the most important aspect of any performance: experiencing it.
So true, Ted. Someone asked me why I don't take my phone with me when I run. I answered that I didn't want anything to disturb me. "What if something happened to you?" he asked. "I guess I would have to use my brain," I replied with restraint and without sarcastically adding, "Duh."
I don’t use my phone in the gym while exercising because I want to be fully present and feel/experience the movement as well as get into a kind of flow. It seems to be considered a very weird thing to do 🤷🏼♀️
Exercise provides its own dopamine. The runner’ high is just as real as any drug but is not possible to OD on and is never laced with fentanyl.
I find this new virtual experience goggle device to be ominous. We are already too detached from the real world. I find it interesting that the same ppl who are pushing ever harder to implement measures to stop climate change are the same ppl who profit from the worst destruction of the earth. But then that observable destruction occurs in places the target “audience” doesn’t reside, so it’s okay I guess.
Uncoupling from the digital world is the only way to be really present and possibly preserve the real world. The selfie crowd might be rescued from its terminal narcissism however their insufferable self centered egos will be in such withdrawal we might have to ship them all to some desolate gulag in Siberia for a year
so as to not feel compelled to murder them. The reality show participants can be sent there as well to entertain them.
There have been benefits to the creation of videography. Ppl get to see places they would never be able to otherwise. Seeing a mother lioness or whale caring for their babies is something 99% of the world would not experience if it was not documented on film.
Kids need to learn how to go outside and use their imaginations to play.
I don't have a smart phone by choice, but my Light Phone can get podcasts. I use it to listen to podcasts quite a bit at home, but I have made the decision that whenever I'm outside, I will not listen to anything but the birds and the wind in the trees. It takes some self-discipline once in a while, but I'm sticking to it, and it's been a good decision.
oh goodness, that's so real. I leave my phone at home often as possible (tbh I'm still on it too much at home.) And people do sometimes get annoyed when I don't respond right away bc I'm at the park, with my kids, and not my phone. But I've yet to have/miss an actual emergency situation bc of it. I grew up with only land line phones. We had car trouble, got lost traveling, we talked to people, asked to borrow a store phone, used pay phones and phone books. I would just use my brain. Duh. Lol.
Yes. I have a silent phone with few notifications on the screen. But the urge to check things and take photos is still there. The solution is leave it at home, leave it in a different room, leave it in the backpack.
Was just talking with my friend about this exact thing. My observation: the swipe/scroll is an incredibly important aspect of this, in that it provides the illusion of agency. You still have the option to say "I don't like this, show me something else" which is enough to keep people feeling like they're in control. And if you're in control, you can quit anytime you want, right? THAT'S not addiction...
lol that’s what I said as a chain smoker. You can still hear it in my voice. People commit sins because they’re enjoyable not because they’re torture. You want to hang out with Lampwick from Pinocchio? It’s great til it’s not. I know it’s not a sin by itself but loving the wrong things is asking for trouble. If that’s how you live your life know you’re asking for it... maybe good and hard. Hope for better for you all
I found myself not being able to read anything longer than a short web article. It was hard to get through a long feature or a book. Your brain gets rewired by all this short content, constantly coming at you in a neverending stream. (And I would caution that Notes is like this too. It's social media, even if Substack tries to tell you it isn't.)
I'm finding, as a lover of readung my entire life, that I too am falling into this trap. I'd never been a fan of TV way before the Internet age. But, here I sit now reading short articles and replying to s strangers comment. Valid as both may be, what is the true "progress" of the three? My opinion has always been that, humans only true progress since our beginnings is our ability to live longer lives. Our needs are replaced with our wants. Percentage wise, we're killing each other in greater numbers than before.
I'm pretty confident that percentage of the worlds population today vs "ever been" is capable of a wee bit more deaths due to today's weapons vs of the past, no?
The. Gulf War wasn't even declared a "war" by Congress. So, I'm unclear on what we may consider "Wars" today.
"According to Our World in Data, the number of armed conflicts has increased in recent years, with at least 150 ongoing armed conflicts each year. However, the number of armed conflicts has rarely fallen below 100 and there has been no year without armed conflict for centuries."
1) I remember hearing the argument that both Sesame Street and MTV promoted this distracted culture and was heavily criticized for children’s attention span.
2) my aunt is a ballet teacher and I was surprised to hear that she does not like the really popular dance competition tv shows like dwts because they like you say only give you a snippet of the symphony instead of the whole masterpiece. I guess it cheapens it and promotes showing off.
3) I’ve also noticed that there is a lot of recycling going on in the arts and music. Most of the current top 40 songs use a former popular song in its hook. And cartoons and pop culture have always referenced the classics for laughs (think like bugs bunny).
4) I completely agree with you that these text execs should not be choosing our art and culture and should definitely be reigned in like the sacklers should have been.
5) and lastly when I went to my divorce support group over a decade ago the minister of the group recommended to us to find something beautiful each and every day. Whether it be on your daily commute or anywhere. Take a moment to look at the clouds or trees or listen to breeze. Find that something beautiful every day and take a moment to appreciate it. I find it really grounds me.
Children’s shows like Sesame Street have been speeding up for over forty years. If you can, look at even a clip from the 1970s to now. The dopamine culture is a continuation of the trend.
If you didn’t slip into a coma. I get what you’re saying but I found him boring. Maybe having severe ADHD made listening to his monotone droning too hard to focus on.
That's been happening for a long time though and it came from American TV shows: they don't hold a shot for more than three seconds, maximum. I started noticing that in the 80s. Don't get me wrong, I loved shows like Kojak (although it lost its charm entirely dubbed into German 😂. The Germans used to dub absolutely everything and always with the same dozen or so actors! A lot of Kojak's appeal was from Telly Savalas's voice (“Wer liebt dich, Baby?” Just to be clear, I didn't make a habit of watching American shows dubbed into German. I was born in Berlin but moved to London when I was nine; I only happened to watch Kojak in German on a visit. It really didn't work anymore for me. Quite apart from it just sounding really weird, because they used the same actors to dub all these series, you just couldn't take them seriously. Kojak and Dick van Dyke just shouldn't sound the same! Thankfully that was much rarer in the UK. Most series were American, after all, but I've always preferred watching with subtitles rather than dubbed. I did watch ET in Berlin, dubbed, of course, but that didn't use the same actors and was superbly lip synced. That was another thing with the series like Kojak, the lip syncing was atrocious) (…loved shows like) Hill Street Blues, ER and NYPD Blue. I can't remember how I first became aware of it, but I started counting seconds between shots. Three was relatively long, many were just one or two! If you ever get the chance, try it. I think you'll be surprised. We just don't notice it, it adds tension, drama and pace, but I also found it a little disturbing. It struck me as a kind of dumbing down, like we couldn't hold our attention on anything more than a few seconds long.
Perhaps I'm wrong and it was purely coincidental, but I really think that's where it started.
Kate, as a retired executive chef, I've said the same thing, as your aunt, about the silliness of the cooking competition programs, especially the Ramsey style programs. What next, "Men vs Women Cooking Nude"....oh wait... that's already been done by The Surviver, program.
to point 3, the Today Explained podcast did a great episode about this. The contemporary versions of these songs are dreamed up by the same corps who own the rights to the original, and re-packaging the original with a twist in this way grants them double the royalties
This makes perfect sense. I’m sure doja cats label owns the original hound dog and Dionne’s walk on by. I hated the original corporate mash up of this being every breath you take back in the 90s or whenever that was. But have to say I do like some of it today like lil boo thang and how everyone uses genius of love by magic source every couple of years lol.
I love this post because it's absolutetly true. I hate it because it's absolutely true. You show, perfectly, how this addiction is eating the arts and eating entertainment. I think you left one out: The News Media. The same forces turned news into an outrage pipeline, and even that is beginning to collapse into itself. I think outrage is a subset of the distraction addiction. Maybe TikTok is fentynal and Reddit is meth? Anyway, I've vowed to quit all news consumption for 40 days. I'm just a few days into it and I am beginning to notice the trees.
It's also surprising how much happier you feel. I listen to the radio a lot, mostly Radio 4 and Radio 4 Xtra, but I try to avoid the news. When I go to the South of France in the summer, usually for three weeks, I don't see any at all (we have no TV there) and my mood begins to lighten within a day or two. I recommend taking a break from the news regularly, it's good for your mental health.
I hope you're not offended if I ask whether you're related to Ryuichi Sakamoto? I have no idea how common or not a surname that is. I'm a big fan from way back with the YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra). His solo on NIИ's Just Like You Imagined is brilliant, virtuoso, original and amazing. He is sadly missed 😢.
My lovely wife and I work in tech and family / friends frequently ask if it's OK for their kids to use smart speakers, tablets, smartphones, AR/VR headsets, etc. Our standard response:
We know the people who create and "improve" those devices. They don't let their kids use them. So we don't know why you would let your kids use them.
I think an e-reader that is for books alone - no internet browser, no social media apps, no games - is a skinny electronic book.
But the research I've reviewed comparing retention of information on screens relative to printed pages is strongly in favor of books that don't need to be plugged in to anything.
I used to work in IT as a software engineer and I can vouch for what you've said. The number of times I'd stare at a screen trying to find a bug, give up and get a printout and notice immediately that there's a missing semicolon, it really is surprising how glaringly obvious it becomes. Whether e-ink screens are better I don't know, we were using monochrome monitors (amber, in preference to green. Typically the development department got the worst equipment. All the others had colour monitors. It took me six months before I realized the program I was maintaining had colour text fields!). I do have an eBook and I find it incredibly practical, especially for travelling, but there's something about a real book, a sensual element: the smell of a new book, or an old one come to that, the tactile feeling of turning a page.
Whenever I read for retention (and later review) I use a pen to underline or note, whether on paper or digital. Somehow, a pen (or in the case of digital, a stylus) makes a difference.
I think that’s the key to proofreading, too - which is what you were doing. It’s the need to mark on the page that makes a difference. You might have had the same experience if you were using a tablet rather than a computer.
Having a book in hand is an awesome experience. One, in which, my family continues to enjoy. My 14yr old twin loves the smell of paper & ink from a new book. And used books have personality from previous readers with cornered pages, etc.
I think also that there is at least some decent evidence that something about electronic screens just isn't great for developing brains.
I don't have kids, but if I did, they'd have dumb phones that don't do anything except phone calls and they'd do their reading the old-fashioned way. Reserve screen time for when it's shared with family on TV or a gaming device.
It might not be screens per se, but what happens on the screens. A phone based kindle app and a stand alone kindle refresh differently & might result in a different physiological response from the reader.
I think a more fundamental problem might be that once a kid learns to read, there’s no further instruction about how to read once you can decipher the words.
One of my sons tells me that the 10 year olds in his neighborhood don’t have phones but do have Apple Watches with a cellular connection which allows for calls and texts, just like a flip phone.
Wow wow wow. Like any great poet, Ted, you were able to verbalize what was bubbling in my thoughts while I was not plugged in :-)
Everywhere you look, that Haggard look and face in the phone. I suppose I'm lucky I'm a 1966 model and well into my adulthood before social media cropped up., Ted ... Please tell me reading substack articles doesn't count! I suppose I'm getting a dopamine hit. But I consider this more medium form journalism. Anyway I feel like I get so much out of some great minds. Historians, professors, deep thinkers. Thanks again for great insights!
With substack you can stop and think about what you've read and most of the writings are not for entertainment. You can interact with substack writers. You can't do any of that while watching videos on a phone or glued to a TV screen.
Not just writers, but also commenters. But I’d cut some slack for video/podcasts, because you can pause & reflect. I sometimes find myself constructing counterarguments out loud while walking & listening to podcasts, but I just pretend I’m on the phone & no one notices…
I don't watch video/podcasts and can't comment on them. I don't have a smart phone and don't watch TV. After not watching TV for many years, the other night I looked at program and felt like I was being punished for doing something wrong and made to stand in the corner wearing a conical cap. I'm please to say that I'm completely out of touch with what is going on in the video/digital world and get more enjoyment from watching the flowers on the trees moving with the wind and reading books, and playing music. I do read a few substacks and because I can comment and get feedback, that keeps me engaged with people.
There’s watching something on TV and using the television to watch something. My wife enjoys figure skating, having done it when she was young, so I’ve programmed the television to record those events & at her discretion, she watches them. We both enjoy opera so we get a dvd now & then. I just acquired a full set of the original Twilight Zone to watch sometime. The key is to find something interesting, decide when to watch it & put it on the calendar. But for us, that’s all tertiary entertainment. Mainly we read & listen to classical radio, or American Songbook style music.
I find podcasts very informative. Sticky Notes classical music podcast is instructive, various London Review of Books podcasts shore up my crumbled literary education, Mr. Jim Moon’s Hypnogoria podcast satisfies (from a British perspective) my taste for ghost stories (as does Tony Walker’s Classic Ghost Stories podcast, also here on Substack - listening today to his reading of Joyce’s The Dead), Andrew Hickey’s A History of Rock Music is remarkably educational about American popular music culture from jazz to blues, The Peter Attia Drive attempts to reduce the level of my medical ignorance .. and on & on overwhelmingly.
You seem to have found the middle way. That's enviable. My hearing isn't good enough to listen to podcasts. Music has always been my saving grace. My wife watches TV and listens with headphones so I don't have to hear the noise. Reding also keeps me sane.
My hearing aids are programmed to work directly with my iDevices, but so far my hearing loss doesn’t create a problem even without them. But they are great for when we go to the symphony!
Terrifying and so true. Looks like we're seeing the reality Neil Postman envisioned back in 1984 in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Huxley was right, not Orwell — there's no need to burn books because people have reached catatonic levels of distraction that makes books, and any thought of creative or logical value, irrelevant.
1984 does contemplate the distraction of the masses. Winston, when he leaves his "management class bubble", sees that the common folk outside the party are too involved in watching sports and drinking to care about the tyranny of Big Brother and the machinations of the Party.
If this is a dopamine addiction loop, TikTok is cocaine ... and A.I. is crack (or even worse, meth). Millions of machines generating precisely what you want to see, rendering out your fantasies in pixel-perfect form. The Luddites of old are disparaged as backward-looking, short-sighted simpletons, but I think some new clogs need to be thrown in the machines. If politicians won't legislate, then can users subvert and undermine?
I absolutely 100% agree - except for one point. I'm not sure this is new information. I might be in a filter bubble, but near as I can tell, this is common knowledge - especially among the young people I see every day. That, of course, is the definition of addiction - go to r/meth on Reddit and you see the same thing - people know this stuff is bad for them, but are they willing to do something about it? I think we're at the very beginning of understanding how an individual recovers from an addiction like this.
If I imagine myself in a state of recovery, well - you know they say the worst thing is when your whole community is addicts too. That's a relapse waiting to happen. I try to do all the right things - I'm off social media, I've resumed learning a language, started learning a musical instrument for the first time, read hard-copy books, exercise when I'm not too sick or in pain from my health issues, write, draw... But you know, I'm so bloody lonely that on bad days I can't keep myself off YouTube. If someone figures out a rehab program for this kind of thing, I think that's an idea that'll be worth a lot of money one day.
Perhaps go to some AA meetings that are open to all. It's usually an hour of people talking and listening to each other. I'd suggest not talking at first, just get a feel of the experience.
It's not uncommon for folks to hang out shortly before and after a meeting. This would be a good opportunity to explain why you're there and if it's okay to come back.
In my years of experience with AA, they will be happy to help you. It's possible that some may be able to direct you to closer fit for your situation and possibly even be interested in starting a new meeting for it if one doesn't exist in your area.
If nothing else, it's an hour or so around people who are actively trying to improve themselves and are generally pretty helpful.
I don't know what instrument you're learning, but I strongly recommend learning one that will allow you to easily play with others. Search for what kind of groups are local and then pick an instrument based on that. If there are any local bluegrass or old time groups, it's super easy to learn how to play that style of music well enough to join in, and the people should be very welcoming even to beginners. Playing music can really boost your mood and doing it with others is even better.
Money's an issue, so I opted for a cheap Yamaha Soprano Recorder. I'd read it wasn't too difficult for a beginner to jump into, which is important since I can't afford a teacher. I got the basics watching Sarah Jeffery on Youtube, and since then I've mostly been importing midi's I knew had monophonic melody lines into a freeware program that can display them in easily-readable piano roll format. Even with just those and the fingering chart, I've been able to make some progress. I recently managed to track down a proper method book for free, too.
I went looking, and apparently there is a recorder group in the city. Maybe by the time I'm "intermediate" enough to approach them, I'll have figured out a way around the transportation issues.
Even just tooting away some familiar favorite tunes from my childhood has been a surprising pleasure. I expected a lot of frustration, but even just noodling away at a nice collection of notes can be strangely satisfying. I've written and painted for years, but there's something about making even very simple music that's very special.
Just this week I got a good deal on a very cheap baritone ukulele in octave mandolin tuning GDAE - way more affordable than a real mandolin (or a guitar) but still has the movable chords, which I'm hoping will be easier to follow. I think it'll be nice to try an instrument I can sing along to, even if my voice is pretty ghastly, hahaha...
I've told myself upgrading instruments will be a reward for improving. When I'm good enough that I my housemates won't mind the noise of me playing in earshot - by then, hopefully I'll have scrimped enough for a wooden tenor recorder, or an octave mandolin, but I imagine that's a long way out.
I'd dabbled with sequencers very little for years, but reading Ted's "Music to Raise the Dead" inspired me to take a leap. Or maybe it was his mention of the diddley bow - I just loved the idea that music-making could be something accessible.
For now, I'm happy just playing for myself, but I'll keep playing with others in mind. I have someone who taught himself the harmonica - so I wonder if there's anything we could play together?
Easier said than done. My best friend of over a decade ghosted me - there wasn't even a fight, just entirely stopped engaging. She was always on her phone every time we were hanging out and didn't take kindly to me asking her to put it away so we could talk, properly.
More and more this is just what people are like. I do run into a lot of people through my spouse, but oddly, it seems like all they ever have to talk about is what they're binge-streaming on TV, and why I should watch it too - I've already read Sandman, why would I dedicate it screen-time? With relatives, too, it's gone from storytelling to--"Let me show you the pictures of my vacation on Facebook, since I know you left." It's not for lack of most people that I'm lonely, it's just that talking to them is only a little better than human contact, and actually a little worse for interesting things to say.
The amount of people to not be distracted with is small and ever-dwindling.
Yes. At 68 years, being lonely is a huge problem, and for a variety of reasons I at the moment am passing through a phase where I have zero friends, though occasional contacts.
I have worked to adjust myself to this and over the past few weeks have constructed a routine where I basically am at home all day reading on the internet (and some of that time scrolling videos) and I then walk around near my downtown apartment at night for hours.
It's not great but it's doable for the moment and I who am not a great pray-er am starting to ask God "what next?" because this isn't it. I do have the great fortune to live in a low-income building that has public areas to congregate, and though these people tend to be both uneducated and messed up some are decent folk and I may broaden my efforts to interact there.
I wish you all the best. Ever since, as a teenager, seeing how lonely my grandfather was, I've always dreaded reaching that age because I was always certain I'd be in the same boat. I'm only late thirties, but I'm already pretty close to alone. Any health-related bad luck in the family, and I'll be in a deep hole. I don't suppose there was every much more to life than keeping my mind busy, but I guess that's enough when you're used to it.
I now think I was lucky after all that in the 1970s I HAD to get to a place of work every day. It didnt stop my life long loneliness but the sheer discipline of it kept me motivated - to find as escape route.
I want to make my career in technology addiction and am dreaming up something like rehab for technology addiction. I have a lot of education to go before I can make my dream a reality, but I think there will be a huge need for expertise in this field and I’m really passionate about it.
I haven’t started yet but I’m thinking of getting my Master’s in Counseling and specializing in technology addiction from that angle. Or I might just do a more general Master’s in Psychology. This field is so new that there are no existing tracks about it.
Guy Debord called it the Spectacle. Jean Baudrillard called it the Simulacra. They were both prescient.
Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle made a beautiful song called anhedonia. ( https://chelseawolfe.bandcamp.com/track/anhedonia-feat-emma-ruth-rundle ). It's a good piece of Art. That word and the notion that anhedonia is being orchestrated by a dopamine cartel need to be circulated. Unplugging is probably the best option, and the one we can all do ourselves.
Brilliant. TikTok is digital opium. Down with the dopamine industrial complex!
Youtube is digital opium. Tiktok is digital fentanyl. I suppose Twitter in this metaphor would be cocaine or meth since it's an active experience and its goal is to fuel user engagement by getting people's blood boiling.
As Ted says, "But you will hardly hear about this—because too many people are making far too much money from the dopamine culture."
Most of the S&P's growth over the last decade is fueled by the big 7 tech companies. If they crack down on them, it will likely cause a significant recession and no politician wants to be the one holding the bag when the ride ends.
Of course, if no one cracks down on this sort of thing, we'll have a different kind of recession. See what happened to China in the 19th Century when the British decided to make up their trade deficit pushing opium. There's a reason Xi Jinping is cracking down on video games.
Exactly. You can't build an economy on this rubbish.
Maybe that’s why TikTok in china is a social end national edifier. Xi knows his few children need proper guidance while the threat to his hegemony ,the US, should be dulled weakened and distracted so our strength as a nation will be gone like grass in the winter.
Indeed, they know, never get high on your own supply.
The interesting thing (at least for us) is that we watch a lot of youtube, but the accounts we subscribe to have content that is...how to say this...meditative? A man renovating a stone cabin in the Italian alps, two Australian sisters running a sustainable farm in the rain forrest. Maybe we're in the minority on this. I do with somebody else owned the platform.
Meditative content is certainly better than hyperactive content. But your experience is still not direct -- it's mediated experience through a device. It's still entertainment and distraction.
I think the point Ted is making is that we ourselves should be renovating a cabin or running a farm or something else that involves engaging directly with life -- not watching other people do that on a screen.
I have to admit that I myself am addicted to substack, and would say that I'm learning from the many posts I read, but it's still mediated experience on a screen. All that blue light and secondhand experience -- life did not used to be like this. Time to think about how to wean from so much online time.
Yeah, I get what you (and Ted) is saying, though in this case it honestly seems like watching a movie (which I hard do anymore because modern film is crap).
I do get more than enough involvement with fixing up this 1827-era house and also the abstract painting I do on a daily basis.
That sounds very cool!
Hope I didn't sound lecture-y. I think I was writing it more for my own benefit as I'm appalled at how much time I spend online.
I need to get some projects/activities like yours.
Oh, no offense taken. And yeah, I spend too much time online as well. I mean, I love looking at art on Instagram, but given who owns the platform, I wish that was not so. Even so, I'm really amazed when I see public examples of people addicted to the screen. We live on the Maine coast not far from Acadia National Park and it pains me to see people walking around one of the most beautiful spots in then nation with their head tilted forward, looking at the "portal to the world" instead of the beauty in front of them.
By the way, if you want to check out the stone cabin guy, his name is Martijn Doolaard. We're still working our way through a years worth of his weeklies and are seven months back. The guy is just a wizard of filming and editing.
Yea, I resonate with the point of that we should be interacting more directly with the world and life, and less passively taking it in. It makes me feel sad that I am not doing it, like I am letting my life pass by without actually participating in it. But it's hard for the individual to resist the temptational landscape we live in with all of these platforms. They are just so easy to take in, and active interaction with life is so hard.
Amen
If Substack is of any use to it’s users, it must care about them by pushing them to unplug. Does it make any difference if we know what we have to do and nonetheless don’t do it?
Yes they are very meditative while some are inviting as group social experiences that would seem real and wholesome. The content is not so much the issue. It’s the method of participation through a screen. I like these videos too. People I enjoy being in their company doing the interesting things they do but add the vehicle of say Apple vision and the level of immersion would be intense and binge inducing
Yeah, I get that . My experience of this stuff is very much like watching a movie. It comes up on the television screen. We don't have a huge one but it beats the heck outa the phone. I've seen people sitting out in public viewing videos on their phones....aside from being rude af with the volume up, I just don't get it.
I love the cabin-building videos. Meditative is the exact word for it.
by meditative do you mean relaxing
I’ve seen a lot of garbage being recommended lately on YouTube, unfortunately. Stuff I’ve never looked for. 99.9% of it not meditative.
The interesting thing is that I discovered the Italian Alp cabin videos not from youtube recommendations but from an ad in The Guardian, with a title something like "Why are 500,000 people watching paint dry?"
I notice YouTube is pushing video shorts now
Tictok users brains are similar to a cocaine addicts in a scan.
That’s growth of an almost fake economy. It provides few jobs per dollar and builds nothing lasting.
It’s sad that we’ve even counted it.
Ooh it hurts to hear the truth but then truth and reality are fluid in our not-so-brave-new-world. All of western society is on relative fire and all most of us can do is watch. The transition to full time voyeurism is almost complete.
Wonder what mankind will do when the power goes out?
BOOM.
Crack down on them how?
With regulation. Have you ever wondered why the minimum age for Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Instagram, Snapchat and Tiktok is 13? Did every tech company decide that children under 13 were too young to use their product and not let them sign up out of kindness and compassion? Of course not. The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of 1998 drastically limits the information companies can gather on children 12 or younger. The reason tech companies made the age limit 13 is because they can't make any money selling the data of children younger than that.
There are other possible regulations too. Europe is ahead on this by a considerable margin. However, amending COPPA to make the age cutoff 16, 17, or 18 would be an easy fix to keep children away from the data collection Moloch of big tech.
Hi Brettl Yes regulation is good but that makes me wonder about enforcing it. I’m in Canada and we seem to be managing with a Privacy Commissioner which is fine but again, enforcement. In the States you have COPPA which has been tweaked and added to often right up until now: they are accepting suggestions until March 11th I think. https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/01/ftc-taking-another-look-coppa-kids-online-privacy-we-want-your-insights
What I did find interesting was that America has not ratified the UNs Convention on the Rights of the Child. Whereas Canada has. Is it really because their existing laws more than cover the convention? Canada is working with other countries with UNCRC to try to keep up.
My 2 eldest grandkids each got smartphones when their parents decided they needed new phones and the kids could have the old ones. So if they were stuck somewhere they could call home or for help. They were both in middle school. Both were under 13. And I know that most of their friends had phones too. I doubt it is very different on the other side of the border.
Changing the age would have no effect. Going after Big Tech itself rather than the kids makes more sense. As aggravating as it was trying to haul the kids heads up and away from their phones with persistence, it will pay off.
UNCRC works in many jurisdictions that have recognized that young people may be impacted by technologies differently than adults, be at greater risk of being affected by privacy-related issues, and therefore require special protections.
Some of the most authoritative and current policy and legal instruments that focus on or include provisions for young people’s right to privacy
"FTC is taking another look at COPPA and kids’ online privacy – and we want your insights”. They do say a mouthful but I still do not see any enforcement.
Kids younger than 13 yo regularly have access to the internet and they are nimble about it. Another grandchild could manipulate her dad’s tablet better than he could.
I do believe that it’s not the kids who need the restrictions, it’s all those tech companies who will have to comply, no matter how big a donor they might be.
At 18 a person can vote, enlist, move out on their own, have all sorts of rights and responsibilities and have the ability to decide for themselves how much data they want to share. Upping the age will not stop anything.
That was fun delving into a topic I have not been paying attention to.
Well-said.
1) Comprehensive digital privacy legislation for ALL ages, including banning surveillance advertising.
2) Audit the algorithms and make them public.
3) Add more friction, particularly to the reshare button.
4) Disable deliberately addictive features like infinite scroll and autoplay.
5) Hide the number of likes and followers from each other by default.
That will throw the One Ring into the fire for good, without throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
I guess Substack would be a cross between digital weed and digital alcohol then.
Well-said. That last sentence especially evokes something Catherine Austin Fitts said about Wall Street's dependence on illicit drug money, only *a fortiori*.
A friend of mine and I came up with the idea of a platform for 1 minute videos in the 90s long before YouTube existed. My name for it was going to be "justaminute" , the thing my mum used to say to me when she answered and I said who it was, like every single time I called her!
PS, I visualized MTV years before that was a thing so I believe your claim.
i’ve been cursed with seeing thousands of such prophesies… so do many other people, not least sci-fi authors. i never acted on any of them. :-)
Sadly some things once scoffed at ever happening are coming to fruition like Orwells 1984. Some elements of that and Brave New World have already come into play.
In the first Terminator film the character of Kyle Reece tells Sarah Conner, when she states that the technology for AI doesn’t exist, he replies “not yet, but in forty years it will”. Life imitates art with scary accuracy at times. Like the guy that wrote a novel about the Titanic something like 20 years before it happened.
Creepy stuff. 😱🫠
🤣🤣🤣 it’s my favorite line. As a mom you hear “mom” all day every day.
They're high on the tok man. It's next level as it's a combination of psyops and opium war Tom foolery.
Acronym D.I.C. lol
Why did I post this?
Because it’s funny so thanks for sharing!
Interesting, if not unexpected observation to a 64-year-old baby boomer. I had noticed the deleterious effects some time ago. Most younger people likely will not figure it out for some time, and even then, will have to research, or go for therapy to learn the truth.
I suspect my experience is like many others for my age, but I first became aware a few years ago, with regards to how I listen to music. Back in the 1970's I had a nice stereo receiver, a great turntable, (records were affordable!), a reel-to-reel deck and loved listening to music. It was not just the act of listening, but encompassed selecting a record, removing it from the sleeve, cueing it up on the turntable, selecting the turntable on the receiver, and finally dropping the needle. Listening to the music was a prolonged reward that was delivered over several minutes. The reel to reel and starting in the 80’s and later, cassette decks made it easier to put together primitive "play lists" of favorite songs. . We could also listen to music in the car as tape decks became cheaper in the late 70's and early 80's. . .
Things stayed static for several years until computers advanced from room sized behemoths to minicomputers to microcomputers, to today’s personal computers. In an amazingly short time, it was possible to have a computer which was little bigger than a shoe box that could hold one’s entire music library. Today, a small player that is scarcely larger than a postage stamp can hold hours of music. Worse, personal computers today offer software that allows a person to instantly select and listen to any tune they have in their library, or can find on the internet.
For me, over time, I find myself listening to music in a different way. I cue a song, shift to the hook of that song, listen. . .and move on to some other song. Why bother with the whole song that used to satisfy me, when the hook is quick and satisfying?
The reality is that I hate the way I find myself listening recently. As the author notes, the dopamine hook seems to be all that is important. . music has become an instant gratification, rather than a prolonged pleasure. Discovery of a new song is rare, and I find myself getting bored quickly.
Fortunately, I have caught myself and realized what is happening. Migrating back to the older ways of listening, is happening for me, albeit slowly. Life is short, but spending every moment to obtain a 10 second dopamine fix is unsatisfying and depressing.
I had kids very late in life. I am older than you by a couple years and my kids are grown but having them late brought new music into my sphere so I am more tapped into newer sounds. Some of its good stuff and some is garbage. I think the thing that is missing from most new rock is the explosive guitar rifts from the old masters like Clapton, Hendrix and Van Halen. I know there were many others but it seems to be a dying art form.
Sometimes I think of using TikTok to encourage people to go outside, and get lost in the weeds, then… Naaasa, I’m not wanting to get sucked in.
Yes, agree with this article. It's a big problem, but this ill is also attacking from the other direction too. At lot of people now no longer think an experience is real or valid in itself unless they can record it on their mobile phone and probably upload it to social media for social validation and attention. This is crazy. The real world isn't real enough anymore, it has to exist online instead with likes attached.
At some point tough love needs to come in to discipline this disaster. That means taking the drugs and suppliers away from the addicts and victims. That is going to be tough because they won't want that and there's a huge integrated system to keep addicts and victims in this trap
"At lot of people now no longer think an experience is real or valid in itself unless they can record it on their mobile phone and probably upload it to social media for social validation and attention."
I was recently going through some old pictures of my wife's family. 100 years ago each person had probably 3 pictures of themselves. 1 as a baby. 1 as a child. 1 as an old person. It was nice to see these pictures.
Then I imagined my kids or grandkids going through my photos... 15k (+ another 20k from my wife). Then it hit me... No one will ever go through thousands of pictures. Ever. Not even me! (and I'm the most invested person in my photos)
Anyway... I think the train has left the station and there's no going back.
So true. Both my mother and my father-in-law recently turned 80. I made each of them a video of their lives. They each had a baby picture, one as a grade school student, and their high school senior portrait.
My great aunt, born 1900, left only a tiny stack of photos like the ones you mention - and she was always getting rid of things. I thought it was strange not to save and collect but it was interesting...now I see she was unburdening her self and living in the present. She had a great laugh, could converse on many subjects and most importantly offered her full attention.
love this. i often think about how many photos i'm going to leave behind. at this rate is could be half a million...
I used to not take photos much because of the belief life is to be enjoyed & shared through conversation, not posted online. But I've had a change of heart.
My mother is will be 100 years old in May. Though highly functional, she has vascular dementia, and poor memory of her life and experiences. But photos of her family from before she was born through today keep her engaged and bring her great happiness. She enjoys the pictures we've put on the TV screensaver more than she enjoys most movies and TV shows.
So I snap more pictures of my family and friends than I used to, because I'm not only enjoying my life in real time, I'm taking care of my future self.
It’s nice to hear handful of pictures had a huge impact in all your lives! There’s a lot of beauty in the past where things took time and there wasn’t unlimited cloud storage
Oh dear, I've thought the same. In fact, the rarity makes the pictures of the past more interesting. When we really thought my father was dying, I was tasked by an elder brother with going through family photos in order to make a slide show which has become a fixture at funerals down here. I was none too pleased with this assignment, having little interest in such things nor expectation that attendees do either - and no experience scanning or creating a digital photo collection; but certain tasks fall to daughters. So I set about this. The process revealed that Mother had far more photo albums than I realized (no one had ever opened them since she had haphazardly filled them, not particularly in any order, and put them high on a shelf; as a child I had looked at the *one* then extant because I was the baby, and I wanted to see what the family had been without me, an idea I found strange, and what my brothers had looked like as sweet (!) little kids). There was also a *much* smaller number of longer-ago B&W photos, of parents and of the elders ...
First: there has been some pleasure in sharing certain photos I've come across, some of which my brothers enjoyed sharing with their kids. On the phone. One, the only one, of parents in their engagement period, was quickly dubbed "Angel and the Bad Boy".
Everyone prefers the older photos, even the ones from our childhood seem more interesting, having that vintage photo feel and different cars and clothes and such. And a kind of running theme of our often sullen expressions (you couldn't instantly pick and choose then, take a dozen digital snaps, discard, and ensure that everyone is thrilled all the time). Which now seems funny though it actually reflected a genuinely troubled atmosphere at the time. And makes the ones where we seem happy, even nicer.
They are just inherently more interesting. The ones of the grandparents/great-grandparents even more so. A single photo of maternal grandparents at the time of their wedding (no wedding dress then, you just wore your best dress) - they look like Scott and Zelda, far more memorable than a dozen photos. My staid, respectable banker paternal grandfather looked as a young man, like a street brawler out of a Hollywood movie.
The thing is, no one wants an amorphous mass of photos any more than we want Mother's collection of Toby jugs and teacups and blue willow, so I am trying to cull - realizing the same should be done for my own, mostly from the childhood of my only child, and from trips.
And it's really hard to figure out who or what I am saving all this for. Yet one can't just dump them all at once.
And if you've got a little OCD as I do, it's even harder. For instance, I had pretty periods and less pretty periods, as a child/girl/woman. I thought, I'll keep only flattering photos of myself. But my compulsiveness wouldn't permit me to do that.
My nuclear family was: three kids; there are two spouses currently; and four grandchildren among us. None of us are now close, and the photos are a record that we once spent all our time together, which now seems unbelievable. It might be less poignant and fraught if we were necessarily still in each other's lives in that customary way.
It's almost as though: I've looked at these photos and I am the last person that ever needs to. I am "curating" a small box for each brother; but the remainder seem to be my own black hole to deal with.
Very true. Excellent comment.
Taking away drugs/supplies from others never works.
Singapore executes drug dealers. No drug problem there
Drugs are just one minor modality of addiction.
Addiction is overwhelming involvement with anything (typically to deleterious result), as a response to the impoverishment of the spirit resulting from psychosocial dislocation.
I should introduce you to my son’s “gf”(but I won’t). She fits your definition to a T.
Not sure I understand about your son’s “gf”.
The definition of addiction is from Bruce K Alexander, he is the researcher famous for “rat park”.
And I’m sure they never make a mistake who they execute.
"Taking the Drugs away" means total devestation to global economy
If by "global" economy, you mean the economy of a few regions of the globe that plunder the rest of it for resources to produce this technology, which is really far worse than any drugs could ever be, then so what?
If so, then let it be devastated, because it must be for anything to get better and the path that leads to devastation is the one that people have chosen, collectively, to take. It is people who form societies and economies, they do not go one way or another for any reason outside of our control. They are not autonomous; we create them.
If there is complete collapse of the worst kind—the war of all for all—it is because the people who have formed these economies and who depend on them have chosen this fate for themselves, despite that they could have chosen differently. Everyone is free to make a change at any time, both those in Silicon Valley who have created this economy and the people who are dependent on it and its poisons.
Internet use only took off in the 90s, social media in the noughties. This is a very new addiction in human terms. So it can be reversed.
I agree with you that it would not be devastating at all to go back to the pre-90s world, especially since these industries are based on exploitation of human, mineral, and energy resources in poorer countries.
It would also mean that governments and tech companies could not reach us with their loads and loads of lies and crap, and we would rediscover that there's actually a real and quite cool world out there (if the government stopped spraying it with chemicals!).
You. can give it the let it play out credo but one never knows where the tracks lead over the horizon and who may fall victim and what may happen consequentially. Not to say we CAN stop it. Given the opportunity we should try but it is now a colossal whack a mole challenge and growing more so as the clock tiks. Given our current Brezhnev level leadership I’m eyeing a farm job so maybe I won’t starve when you have to be a part of the big thing to “survive”.
How's that work
My guess is that farmers and fishermen are not screen addicts.
sounds about right
So true. Take less photos, print them, treasure them, stop the excessive madness...except cats, take thousands of pictures of cats, leave that for the future. haha! But seriously, agreed.
Very true. There are only two real responses to this. One - as you say - cold turkey.
The second is creating a fundamental shift in the incentive driving the platform algorithms. It's simple and comprehensive. Platforms should be taxed according to the self reported well being of their users, with tax credits going to the platforms with the happiest users.
Anything else is putting roadblocks in front of a flood.
"Platforms should be taxed according to the self reported well being of their users, with tax credits going to the platforms with the happiest users."
Absolutely BRILLIANT. I agree with you completely. I'd rather see the entire grid go down, but realistically, I know it's not going to happen. What you propose here is probably the best idea I've seen yet. Thanks for sharing.
Sad to say you're right. I don't go to as many concerts as I used to, they've become so expensive, but I'm astonished by the number of people who watch the entire performance through their mobiles! Live recordings are almost invariably disappointing in that they lack the essential element of being there and experiencing it, of being involved, part of the performance, but that's exactly what these people are doing. I think there's an element of FOMO involved, that by recording the event they hope to pick up on detail they might have missed. It's crazy, because they're missing the whole point. I'm a musician myself and an audience is an essential part of a performance. It's what makes every one different and special, but I despair when I see people watching me through their mobiles. It makes them not present, unengaged, silent witnesses instead of participants. Fortunately for me it hasn't happened very often at all, I'm not that famous or ‘important’ enough for people to want to preserve my efforts. It's ironic that in that wish to hold on to an event, people are actually detaching themselves, distancing themselves and missing the most important aspect of any performance: experiencing it.
So true, Ted. Someone asked me why I don't take my phone with me when I run. I answered that I didn't want anything to disturb me. "What if something happened to you?" he asked. "I guess I would have to use my brain," I replied with restraint and without sarcastically adding, "Duh."
I don’t use my phone in the gym while exercising because I want to be fully present and feel/experience the movement as well as get into a kind of flow. It seems to be considered a very weird thing to do 🤷🏼♀️
I’m glad I’m not the only one who has no interest having a phone with me while I’m exercising.
I take mine because it’s the only time I have for pleasure reading/listening to books. Once I start the book, the phone goes in my pocket.
Exercise provides its own dopamine. The runner’ high is just as real as any drug but is not possible to OD on and is never laced with fentanyl.
I find this new virtual experience goggle device to be ominous. We are already too detached from the real world. I find it interesting that the same ppl who are pushing ever harder to implement measures to stop climate change are the same ppl who profit from the worst destruction of the earth. But then that observable destruction occurs in places the target “audience” doesn’t reside, so it’s okay I guess.
Uncoupling from the digital world is the only way to be really present and possibly preserve the real world. The selfie crowd might be rescued from its terminal narcissism however their insufferable self centered egos will be in such withdrawal we might have to ship them all to some desolate gulag in Siberia for a year
so as to not feel compelled to murder them. The reality show participants can be sent there as well to entertain them.
There have been benefits to the creation of videography. Ppl get to see places they would never be able to otherwise. Seeing a mother lioness or whale caring for their babies is something 99% of the world would not experience if it was not documented on film.
Kids need to learn how to go outside and use their imaginations to play.
Sounds wonderful to me.
I don't have a smart phone by choice, but my Light Phone can get podcasts. I use it to listen to podcasts quite a bit at home, but I have made the decision that whenever I'm outside, I will not listen to anything but the birds and the wind in the trees. It takes some self-discipline once in a while, but I'm sticking to it, and it's been a good decision.
"Nothing" phones are selling like hot cakes.
oh goodness, that's so real. I leave my phone at home often as possible (tbh I'm still on it too much at home.) And people do sometimes get annoyed when I don't respond right away bc I'm at the park, with my kids, and not my phone. But I've yet to have/miss an actual emergency situation bc of it. I grew up with only land line phones. We had car trouble, got lost traveling, we talked to people, asked to borrow a store phone, used pay phones and phone books. I would just use my brain. Duh. Lol.
Yes. I have a silent phone with few notifications on the screen. But the urge to check things and take photos is still there. The solution is leave it at home, leave it in a different room, leave it in the backpack.
You cannot overcome temptation entirely by crutches and/or avoidance. Bring your phone along just to show it who’s boss.
It’s showing me it’s the boss
lol. Today, me too. Time for errands. I will try to subdue it when on my own time again!
when i'm surrounded by cool people it has no power over me
It’s true, we have become afraid to leave the house without our phone. Amazing that I lived until 35 years old without a mobile phone, and I was okay.
Was just talking with my friend about this exact thing. My observation: the swipe/scroll is an incredibly important aspect of this, in that it provides the illusion of agency. You still have the option to say "I don't like this, show me something else" which is enough to keep people feeling like they're in control. And if you're in control, you can quit anytime you want, right? THAT'S not addiction...
Like channel flicking with a remote, but we just had 4 channels, but the internet it limitless.
lol that’s what I said as a chain smoker. You can still hear it in my voice. People commit sins because they’re enjoyable not because they’re torture. You want to hang out with Lampwick from Pinocchio? It’s great til it’s not. I know it’s not a sin by itself but loving the wrong things is asking for trouble. If that’s how you live your life know you’re asking for it... maybe good and hard. Hope for better for you all
Great piece (and I love that Rise of Dopamine Culture chart). This is why I quit all social media forever 10 years ago:
https://sassone.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/thoughts-on-social-media/
I found myself not being able to read anything longer than a short web article. It was hard to get through a long feature or a book. Your brain gets rewired by all this short content, constantly coming at you in a neverending stream. (And I would caution that Notes is like this too. It's social media, even if Substack tries to tell you it isn't.)
I'm finding, as a lover of readung my entire life, that I too am falling into this trap. I'd never been a fan of TV way before the Internet age. But, here I sit now reading short articles and replying to s strangers comment. Valid as both may be, what is the true "progress" of the three? My opinion has always been that, humans only true progress since our beginnings is our ability to live longer lives. Our needs are replaced with our wants. Percentage wise, we're killing each other in greater numbers than before.
Huh? The percent of humans actively engaged in physical violence / war is relatively very low. Perhaps as low as it's ever been
I'm pretty confident that percentage of the worlds population today vs "ever been" is capable of a wee bit more deaths due to today's weapons vs of the past, no?
The. Gulf War wasn't even declared a "war" by Congress. So, I'm unclear on what we may consider "Wars" today.
"According to Our World in Data, the number of armed conflicts has increased in recent years, with at least 150 ongoing armed conflicts each year. However, the number of armed conflicts has rarely fallen below 100 and there has been no year without armed conflict for centuries."
I’m talking about the ratio of total population to population engaged in armed conflict.
I’m not talking about number of armed conflicts.
Due to the increased access to global news, the perception is that war becoming more common
I'm talking about total deaths. Which I think is kinda important.
substack isn't social media?
Touche
Lots of interesting thoughts here.
1) I remember hearing the argument that both Sesame Street and MTV promoted this distracted culture and was heavily criticized for children’s attention span.
2) my aunt is a ballet teacher and I was surprised to hear that she does not like the really popular dance competition tv shows like dwts because they like you say only give you a snippet of the symphony instead of the whole masterpiece. I guess it cheapens it and promotes showing off.
3) I’ve also noticed that there is a lot of recycling going on in the arts and music. Most of the current top 40 songs use a former popular song in its hook. And cartoons and pop culture have always referenced the classics for laughs (think like bugs bunny).
4) I completely agree with you that these text execs should not be choosing our art and culture and should definitely be reigned in like the sacklers should have been.
5) and lastly when I went to my divorce support group over a decade ago the minister of the group recommended to us to find something beautiful each and every day. Whether it be on your daily commute or anywhere. Take a moment to look at the clouds or trees or listen to breeze. Find that something beautiful every day and take a moment to appreciate it. I find it really grounds me.
Children’s shows like Sesame Street have been speeding up for over forty years. If you can, look at even a clip from the 1970s to now. The dopamine culture is a continuation of the trend.
That was the beauty of Mr. Rogers.
If you didn’t slip into a coma. I get what you’re saying but I found him boring. Maybe having severe ADHD made listening to his monotone droning too hard to focus on.
Can’t please everyone! :)
I always found Mr Rogers rather creepy.
Yup.
That's been happening for a long time though and it came from American TV shows: they don't hold a shot for more than three seconds, maximum. I started noticing that in the 80s. Don't get me wrong, I loved shows like Kojak (although it lost its charm entirely dubbed into German 😂. The Germans used to dub absolutely everything and always with the same dozen or so actors! A lot of Kojak's appeal was from Telly Savalas's voice (“Wer liebt dich, Baby?” Just to be clear, I didn't make a habit of watching American shows dubbed into German. I was born in Berlin but moved to London when I was nine; I only happened to watch Kojak in German on a visit. It really didn't work anymore for me. Quite apart from it just sounding really weird, because they used the same actors to dub all these series, you just couldn't take them seriously. Kojak and Dick van Dyke just shouldn't sound the same! Thankfully that was much rarer in the UK. Most series were American, after all, but I've always preferred watching with subtitles rather than dubbed. I did watch ET in Berlin, dubbed, of course, but that didn't use the same actors and was superbly lip synced. That was another thing with the series like Kojak, the lip syncing was atrocious) (…loved shows like) Hill Street Blues, ER and NYPD Blue. I can't remember how I first became aware of it, but I started counting seconds between shots. Three was relatively long, many were just one or two! If you ever get the chance, try it. I think you'll be surprised. We just don't notice it, it adds tension, drama and pace, but I also found it a little disturbing. It struck me as a kind of dumbing down, like we couldn't hold our attention on anything more than a few seconds long.
Perhaps I'm wrong and it was purely coincidental, but I really think that's where it started.
RE: #2 - Synchronized Competitions are not Dancing to begin with
When is the last time you saw so-called creatives DANCING ? And not practicing
Synchronized Shlock moves from the past ?
Kate, as a retired executive chef, I've said the same thing, as your aunt, about the silliness of the cooking competition programs, especially the Ramsey style programs. What next, "Men vs Women Cooking Nude"....oh wait... that's already been done by The Surviver, program.
https://cloudappreciationsociety.org
to point 3, the Today Explained podcast did a great episode about this. The contemporary versions of these songs are dreamed up by the same corps who own the rights to the original, and re-packaging the original with a twist in this way grants them double the royalties
This makes perfect sense. I’m sure doja cats label owns the original hound dog and Dionne’s walk on by. I hated the original corporate mash up of this being every breath you take back in the 90s or whenever that was. But have to say I do like some of it today like lil boo thang and how everyone uses genius of love by magic source every couple of years lol.
And then you snap it with your phone and post it on Facebook. Or I do.
This stack is a new follow for me. This piece just confirmed my support. Excellent framework to better understand the undercurrent of it all.
I love this post because it's absolutetly true. I hate it because it's absolutely true. You show, perfectly, how this addiction is eating the arts and eating entertainment. I think you left one out: The News Media. The same forces turned news into an outrage pipeline, and even that is beginning to collapse into itself. I think outrage is a subset of the distraction addiction. Maybe TikTok is fentynal and Reddit is meth? Anyway, I've vowed to quit all news consumption for 40 days. I'm just a few days into it and I am beginning to notice the trees.
I think what is collapsing is the pre-modern delivery system. The data is still there, but it’s harder to turn it into information.
But what I'd the world ends and you miss news of it?
It's also surprising how much happier you feel. I listen to the radio a lot, mostly Radio 4 and Radio 4 Xtra, but I try to avoid the news. When I go to the South of France in the summer, usually for three weeks, I don't see any at all (we have no TV there) and my mood begins to lighten within a day or two. I recommend taking a break from the news regularly, it's good for your mental health.
I hope you're not offended if I ask whether you're related to Ryuichi Sakamoto? I have no idea how common or not a surname that is. I'm a big fan from way back with the YMO (Yellow Magic Orchestra). His solo on NIИ's Just Like You Imagined is brilliant, virtuoso, original and amazing. He is sadly missed 😢.
Yup. It stokes the polarization by showcasing the extremes of either side of the political/social divide.
My lovely wife and I work in tech and family / friends frequently ask if it's OK for their kids to use smart speakers, tablets, smartphones, AR/VR headsets, etc. Our standard response:
We know the people who create and "improve" those devices. They don't let their kids use them. So we don't know why you would let your kids use them.
Does that include standalone Kindles?
I think an e-reader that is for books alone - no internet browser, no social media apps, no games - is a skinny electronic book.
But the research I've reviewed comparing retention of information on screens relative to printed pages is strongly in favor of books that don't need to be plugged in to anything.
I used to work in IT as a software engineer and I can vouch for what you've said. The number of times I'd stare at a screen trying to find a bug, give up and get a printout and notice immediately that there's a missing semicolon, it really is surprising how glaringly obvious it becomes. Whether e-ink screens are better I don't know, we were using monochrome monitors (amber, in preference to green. Typically the development department got the worst equipment. All the others had colour monitors. It took me six months before I realized the program I was maintaining had colour text fields!). I do have an eBook and I find it incredibly practical, especially for travelling, but there's something about a real book, a sensual element: the smell of a new book, or an old one come to that, the tactile feeling of turning a page.
Whenever I read for retention (and later review) I use a pen to underline or note, whether on paper or digital. Somehow, a pen (or in the case of digital, a stylus) makes a difference.
I think that’s the key to proofreading, too - which is what you were doing. It’s the need to mark on the page that makes a difference. You might have had the same experience if you were using a tablet rather than a computer.
My eBook allows me to make notes too and I often do, yes.
Having a book in hand is an awesome experience. One, in which, my family continues to enjoy. My 14yr old twin loves the smell of paper & ink from a new book. And used books have personality from previous readers with cornered pages, etc.
I think also that there is at least some decent evidence that something about electronic screens just isn't great for developing brains.
I don't have kids, but if I did, they'd have dumb phones that don't do anything except phone calls and they'd do their reading the old-fashioned way. Reserve screen time for when it's shared with family on TV or a gaming device.
It might not be screens per se, but what happens on the screens. A phone based kindle app and a stand alone kindle refresh differently & might result in a different physiological response from the reader.
I think a more fundamental problem might be that once a kid learns to read, there’s no further instruction about how to read once you can decipher the words.
One of my sons tells me that the 10 year olds in his neighborhood don’t have phones but do have Apple Watches with a cellular connection which allows for calls and texts, just like a flip phone.
bingo
Ted
Just read your thoughtful article on the way home from a three hour play in a packed house so I’m feeling like all is not lost
Did you count the gray or balding heads?
There seems to be a strong generational thing going on with this.
Or maybe young people will age out of it.
The crowd skewed older, but it was a matinee.
It’s also the cost of live entertainment. Though kids manage to pay for Taylor Swift tickets.
i was a comedy show. I was the youngest person there. I'm 26.
Saturday was a play. Sunday was the NC Symphony in town. Both were sold out. Likely 85% were over 65...
I popped into a stand-up comedy show downtown. It appeared we were the youngest people there, 26 and 28.
Wow wow wow. Like any great poet, Ted, you were able to verbalize what was bubbling in my thoughts while I was not plugged in :-)
Everywhere you look, that Haggard look and face in the phone. I suppose I'm lucky I'm a 1966 model and well into my adulthood before social media cropped up., Ted ... Please tell me reading substack articles doesn't count! I suppose I'm getting a dopamine hit. But I consider this more medium form journalism. Anyway I feel like I get so much out of some great minds. Historians, professors, deep thinkers. Thanks again for great insights!
With substack you can stop and think about what you've read and most of the writings are not for entertainment. You can interact with substack writers. You can't do any of that while watching videos on a phone or glued to a TV screen.
Not just writers, but also commenters. But I’d cut some slack for video/podcasts, because you can pause & reflect. I sometimes find myself constructing counterarguments out loud while walking & listening to podcasts, but I just pretend I’m on the phone & no one notices…
I don't watch video/podcasts and can't comment on them. I don't have a smart phone and don't watch TV. After not watching TV for many years, the other night I looked at program and felt like I was being punished for doing something wrong and made to stand in the corner wearing a conical cap. I'm please to say that I'm completely out of touch with what is going on in the video/digital world and get more enjoyment from watching the flowers on the trees moving with the wind and reading books, and playing music. I do read a few substacks and because I can comment and get feedback, that keeps me engaged with people.
There’s watching something on TV and using the television to watch something. My wife enjoys figure skating, having done it when she was young, so I’ve programmed the television to record those events & at her discretion, she watches them. We both enjoy opera so we get a dvd now & then. I just acquired a full set of the original Twilight Zone to watch sometime. The key is to find something interesting, decide when to watch it & put it on the calendar. But for us, that’s all tertiary entertainment. Mainly we read & listen to classical radio, or American Songbook style music.
I find podcasts very informative. Sticky Notes classical music podcast is instructive, various London Review of Books podcasts shore up my crumbled literary education, Mr. Jim Moon’s Hypnogoria podcast satisfies (from a British perspective) my taste for ghost stories (as does Tony Walker’s Classic Ghost Stories podcast, also here on Substack - listening today to his reading of Joyce’s The Dead), Andrew Hickey’s A History of Rock Music is remarkably educational about American popular music culture from jazz to blues, The Peter Attia Drive attempts to reduce the level of my medical ignorance .. and on & on overwhelmingly.
Your ability to play music is enviable…
You seem to have found the middle way. That's enviable. My hearing isn't good enough to listen to podcasts. Music has always been my saving grace. My wife watches TV and listens with headphones so I don't have to hear the noise. Reding also keeps me sane.
My hearing aids are programmed to work directly with my iDevices, but so far my hearing loss doesn’t create a problem even without them. But they are great for when we go to the symphony!
Terrifying and so true. Looks like we're seeing the reality Neil Postman envisioned back in 1984 in Amusing Ourselves to Death. Huxley was right, not Orwell — there's no need to burn books because people have reached catatonic levels of distraction that makes books, and any thought of creative or logical value, irrelevant.
Postman’s book is great.
Similar to the censorship approach of letting people say whatever they want because there's so much noise no one will pay attention anyway.
1984 does contemplate the distraction of the masses. Winston, when he leaves his "management class bubble", sees that the common folk outside the party are too involved in watching sports and drinking to care about the tyranny of Big Brother and the machinations of the Party.
If this is a dopamine addiction loop, TikTok is cocaine ... and A.I. is crack (or even worse, meth). Millions of machines generating precisely what you want to see, rendering out your fantasies in pixel-perfect form. The Luddites of old are disparaged as backward-looking, short-sighted simpletons, but I think some new clogs need to be thrown in the machines. If politicians won't legislate, then can users subvert and undermine?
boundaries with technology are essential for human survival and life satisfaction
I absolutely 100% agree - except for one point. I'm not sure this is new information. I might be in a filter bubble, but near as I can tell, this is common knowledge - especially among the young people I see every day. That, of course, is the definition of addiction - go to r/meth on Reddit and you see the same thing - people know this stuff is bad for them, but are they willing to do something about it? I think we're at the very beginning of understanding how an individual recovers from an addiction like this.
If I imagine myself in a state of recovery, well - you know they say the worst thing is when your whole community is addicts too. That's a relapse waiting to happen. I try to do all the right things - I'm off social media, I've resumed learning a language, started learning a musical instrument for the first time, read hard-copy books, exercise when I'm not too sick or in pain from my health issues, write, draw... But you know, I'm so bloody lonely that on bad days I can't keep myself off YouTube. If someone figures out a rehab program for this kind of thing, I think that's an idea that'll be worth a lot of money one day.
Perhaps go to some AA meetings that are open to all. It's usually an hour of people talking and listening to each other. I'd suggest not talking at first, just get a feel of the experience.
It's not uncommon for folks to hang out shortly before and after a meeting. This would be a good opportunity to explain why you're there and if it's okay to come back.
In my years of experience with AA, they will be happy to help you. It's possible that some may be able to direct you to closer fit for your situation and possibly even be interested in starting a new meeting for it if one doesn't exist in your area.
If nothing else, it's an hour or so around people who are actively trying to improve themselves and are generally pretty helpful.
Good luck and God bless!
I don't know what instrument you're learning, but I strongly recommend learning one that will allow you to easily play with others. Search for what kind of groups are local and then pick an instrument based on that. If there are any local bluegrass or old time groups, it's super easy to learn how to play that style of music well enough to join in, and the people should be very welcoming even to beginners. Playing music can really boost your mood and doing it with others is even better.
Money's an issue, so I opted for a cheap Yamaha Soprano Recorder. I'd read it wasn't too difficult for a beginner to jump into, which is important since I can't afford a teacher. I got the basics watching Sarah Jeffery on Youtube, and since then I've mostly been importing midi's I knew had monophonic melody lines into a freeware program that can display them in easily-readable piano roll format. Even with just those and the fingering chart, I've been able to make some progress. I recently managed to track down a proper method book for free, too.
I went looking, and apparently there is a recorder group in the city. Maybe by the time I'm "intermediate" enough to approach them, I'll have figured out a way around the transportation issues.
Even just tooting away some familiar favorite tunes from my childhood has been a surprising pleasure. I expected a lot of frustration, but even just noodling away at a nice collection of notes can be strangely satisfying. I've written and painted for years, but there's something about making even very simple music that's very special.
Just this week I got a good deal on a very cheap baritone ukulele in octave mandolin tuning GDAE - way more affordable than a real mandolin (or a guitar) but still has the movable chords, which I'm hoping will be easier to follow. I think it'll be nice to try an instrument I can sing along to, even if my voice is pretty ghastly, hahaha...
I've told myself upgrading instruments will be a reward for improving. When I'm good enough that I my housemates won't mind the noise of me playing in earshot - by then, hopefully I'll have scrimped enough for a wooden tenor recorder, or an octave mandolin, but I imagine that's a long way out.
I'd dabbled with sequencers very little for years, but reading Ted's "Music to Raise the Dead" inspired me to take a leap. Or maybe it was his mention of the diddley bow - I just loved the idea that music-making could be something accessible.
For now, I'm happy just playing for myself, but I'll keep playing with others in mind. I have someone who taught himself the harmonica - so I wonder if there's anything we could play together?
Maybe find a solution to your loneliness?
Easier said than done. My best friend of over a decade ghosted me - there wasn't even a fight, just entirely stopped engaging. She was always on her phone every time we were hanging out and didn't take kindly to me asking her to put it away so we could talk, properly.
More and more this is just what people are like. I do run into a lot of people through my spouse, but oddly, it seems like all they ever have to talk about is what they're binge-streaming on TV, and why I should watch it too - I've already read Sandman, why would I dedicate it screen-time? With relatives, too, it's gone from storytelling to--"Let me show you the pictures of my vacation on Facebook, since I know you left." It's not for lack of most people that I'm lonely, it's just that talking to them is only a little better than human contact, and actually a little worse for interesting things to say.
The amount of people to not be distracted with is small and ever-dwindling.
Yes. At 68 years, being lonely is a huge problem, and for a variety of reasons I at the moment am passing through a phase where I have zero friends, though occasional contacts.
I have worked to adjust myself to this and over the past few weeks have constructed a routine where I basically am at home all day reading on the internet (and some of that time scrolling videos) and I then walk around near my downtown apartment at night for hours.
It's not great but it's doable for the moment and I who am not a great pray-er am starting to ask God "what next?" because this isn't it. I do have the great fortune to live in a low-income building that has public areas to congregate, and though these people tend to be both uneducated and messed up some are decent folk and I may broaden my efforts to interact there.
I wish you all the best. Ever since, as a teenager, seeing how lonely my grandfather was, I've always dreaded reaching that age because I was always certain I'd be in the same boat. I'm only late thirties, but I'm already pretty close to alone. Any health-related bad luck in the family, and I'll be in a deep hole. I don't suppose there was every much more to life than keeping my mind busy, but I guess that's enough when you're used to it.
Limne, I just read your exchange with Dan and this is absolutely heartbreaking… 🫂
Yes, it’s definitely challenging.
I now think I was lucky after all that in the 1970s I HAD to get to a place of work every day. It didnt stop my life long loneliness but the sheer discipline of it kept me motivated - to find as escape route.
I want to make my career in technology addiction and am dreaming up something like rehab for technology addiction. I have a lot of education to go before I can make my dream a reality, but I think there will be a huge need for expertise in this field and I’m really passionate about it.
What kind of education are you currently pursuing, if you don't mind me asking?
I haven’t started yet but I’m thinking of getting my Master’s in Counseling and specializing in technology addiction from that angle. Or I might just do a more general Master’s in Psychology. This field is so new that there are no existing tracks about it.
You may be needed!
Guy Debord called it the Spectacle. Jean Baudrillard called it the Simulacra. They were both prescient.
Chelsea Wolfe and Emma Ruth Rundle made a beautiful song called anhedonia. ( https://chelseawolfe.bandcamp.com/track/anhedonia-feat-emma-ruth-rundle ). It's a good piece of Art. That word and the notion that anhedonia is being orchestrated by a dopamine cartel need to be circulated. Unplugging is probably the best option, and the one we can all do ourselves.
A very impressive and scary reframing of common culture. What a fabulous post! Thank you.