Deprogramming the Social Media Brain

Reclaiming What the Internet F--ked Up.

The Social Media Brain, kinda.

[AUDIO will be returning next week.]

I am—and you likely are—about twenty-five years (give or take) into having my brain rewired by social media.

I don’t know how successful I’ll be, but I’m trying to untangle some of the wires in my brain’s junction box.

First thing: fixing the reading circuit breaker so it doesn’t trip every time I encounter a full page of uninterrupted text. Early nineteenth-century novels (the Brontë sisters, Mary Shelley) are excellent training for this. (Overachievers: see Thomas Mann, Dostoevsky.)

Over the past few months, I’ve been able—using the very early morning hours—to stretch my concentration from twenty minutes to an hour and a half. And it feels wonderful. My goal is, short term, three hours.

This only works with physical books. Absolutely no Kindle. A well-printed book is a holy object, and holding it in your hands is a sacred experience. You can insert your own thoughts in the margins and be in conversation with the author.

Kinda the on-deck circle.

A comparable experience? Vinyl records. Real, hold-in-your-hand vinyl. (You’ve got to check out

Andres

in The Vinyl Room on this.)

I’m not a Luddite. I simply want to reclaim some of my humanity.

When I think of what we’ve given away—all because something was new, shiny, and convenient—it makes me ill. When I think of the vile creatures this abdication has created—Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Elon F—king Musk—I experience some justifiable self-loathing.

Now, in order to rewire the junction box, it’s important to understand why this happened.

Social media exploits two very human impulses: the desire to share, and the desire to be seen. In the beginning, that felt innocent—even fun.

But we all know what happened next: curated lives, and the hunger to be relevant.

Psychologist Sherry Turkle, in Alone Together and her TED talk, puts it this way:

“We expect more from technology and less from each other. And I ask myself, ‘Why have things come to this?’ [Because] we are vulnerable. We’re lonely—but we’re afraid of intimacy… we’re designing technologies that will give us the illusion of companionship without the demands of friendship.”

We like being present in the minds of others—even people we don’t know. To not be forgotten. To be relevant.

Who am I without an audience?

Not everyone falls for this. But it’s a pretty nifty trap—and most of us do. The dopamine hit of a “like” is addictive.

And without it?

The silence feels like irrelevance, and irrelevance turns to existential dread.

Which is one step away from the fear of death.

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I recently asked my wife, “What size pants do I wear?”
(Note: this is not the same question as “Who wears the pants…”)
She looked at me incredulously.
“How would I know?”

Fair point.

Well—Amazon knows.

Amazon also knows the types of books I buy, the kind of coffee I like in the Keurig (which I bought from them), that I bought “I Didn’t Vote For Him” buttons, that I use Colgate Optic White Advanced Hydrogen Peroxide toothpaste, that we have a cat, used to have a dog, and—based on my office supply habits—I’m probably obsessive-compulsive.

Oh—and they know I looked at (but did not buy) this hat:

And now they want to fill my prescriptions?
That’s not going to happen.

Here’s the trade-off for convenience:

• We’ve put small operations out of business.

• We’ve given away our personal information for free.

• We’ve created an oligarchic class that is destroying the pre-2000 world we once lived in.

And they’ve made us twitchy as lab rats.

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The Christian mystics knew something we’ve forgotten: there is beauty in not striving to be seen. They called it anonymitas, occultatio, or more commonly, humilitas.

Meister Eckhart, the German mystic, wrote:

“There is nothing in the world that resembles God as much as silence.”

(Those of you who’ve read Honest to God will know I’m not referring to the Judeo-Christian God here—but to something Unknowable, Transcendent.)

As organized religion collapses—into dying congregations on one side and Christian Nationalism on the other—I’m finding refuge in an older, deeper stream:

Mystics. (Bonus: They’re still in print.)

Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper’s Wife) said:

Mysticism is not a mystery. It’s just paying attention.

Rumi said:

Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.

And while you’re at it, sell your desire to be relevant.

We don’t need more certainty. We need more mystery.

We need to remember how to be human.

On a recent trip, Kerry and I found a museum, way off the beaten path, that was all Monet. And, amazingly, uncrowded.

The collection wasn’t large, but it had some of Monet’s seminal works, including “Impression, Sunrise,” from which the name “Impressionists” came.

I have a series of pieces, based on Monet, that will start dropping this week on Spotify. Here is a preview:

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🔔 Enjoyed this? If this stirred something in you (existential dread, recognition, the urge to throw your phone into a river), consider subscribing — it’s free, and it helps me keep writing through the noise.

🥶 Know someone else dancing on the edge of collapse? Send them this piece. Or post it on Bluesky, Facebook(!), or wherever humans still congregate.

📩 I Want to Hear From You. What’s your signal in the noise lately? Does this feel like 1933 to you… or just another tremor?
Leave a comment!

⏭️ Coming Next Week

“Unfortunately, the (Algo)rithm Method Does Work.”