In which Wolf discusses why social media stresses you out, and what you can do about it. Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://youtu.be/t7yAnvu2fnk
I love technology. I've worked with it for over 40 years. And I've watched the internet rise, I've seen the entire personal computer revolution before that. I got into computers when I was 11 years old. And it's been truly remarkable to see the amount of human progress in that time. I've also seen the internet become a source of a lot of human misery. In my last video, I talked about trolls. And they're obviously a huge source of online misery. There's only a couple ways of dealing with trolls, one of them is ignoring them, the other is laughing at them. But ignoring them is actually better because any attention is what they're after.
A lot of misery online comes from, you know, what they call "doomscrolling." Which is, you know, going through your feed, looking at the misery, looking at the disagreements, looking at the angst and name calling. And just kind of, you know, leaving drained and miserable at what you've seen. And unfortunately, there are some good things as well in our social media feeds. And you know, some of us feel like we can totally turn them off, and get away from them. Personally, I treat most of my social media as write only, I don't spend a lot of time doomscrolling, I think that's probably best. But sometimes I find myself reading an interesting thread, and I find these comments in there that are basically worse than useless. And I want to give you some advice here that will help you deal with these. I'm going to focus on Twitter, but this applies to every social media platform. I'm going to show you a technique that will reduce the amount of stress you experience on social media, and empower you to make your online experience more and more joyful over time.
I've had some great debates on Twitter. I love a good debate. The other person, I think, both of us are making some good points even if we ultimately agree to disagree. But many debates on Twitter end in name calling. Unfortunately they also start that way. You make what you think is a good point and the other person is like, "You're dumb lol." At that point, anything you say is pointless. There's no reasonable rebuttal to you're dumb. In their mind, not responding is also a win. You coward.
This is a sort of low-grade trolling that happens all the time. And you are far outnumbered by them, so you can't win. Or can you? The secret is in understanding that when you read a comment like that, even if it wasn't directed at you, it's just in somebody's comment thread of something else you were reading, that you just invested some of your precious life energy into reading it. And now you're never going to get that energy back. Whenever something in my life goes wrong, I ask myself this single, magical question.
What can I do so that this never happens again?
You can ask any of my family. Whenever you know, a dish get's broken, or somebody misses a meeting or something like that, I always ask. What can you do so that this never happens again? And I ask it of myself at least twice as often. And then I act on the answer to my question. In the case of any single comment I read on Twitter, or any other social media app I use, I'm always asking, "If I ever read another comment from this person, is it likely to be more of the same?" And I feel like it was a waste of precious heartbeats to scan their comment. I immediately block them. Yes, it takes two or three taps to get past this "Are you sure you want to block this person forever" stuff, but it's worth it. And here's why.
First, you never have to read another comment from them again. Now if they're some anon or whatever, you probably never would anyway. But the most important thing is you affirm your own, personal, sovereignty. You remind yourself that you are in control of your daily life experience. I'm not saying you should block people just because they disagree with you. But it's in how they disagree that makes the difference. Having your views challenged is healthy, even if you are sure the other person is wrong about whatever you're discussing. You don't want to turn your life into an echo-chamber, and people who do literally go insane, we see that all the time online now. So as you go through a comment thread, remind yourself, do I ever need to read a comment from this person ever again in my life? And if the answer is no, insta-block.
Sometimes the people who contribute nothing happen to be friends or relatives, and the consequences of blocking them, well, they could be worse in certain ways. But all the social media platforms also let you mute people without actually blocking them. So learn how to do this when your relationship matters, even when what they usually go on about doesn't. You are the ruler of your life, don't let anyone else live rent-free in your brain without contributing anything pf value. Raise your standards and start treating your social media feed as a gardener treats a plant. Get in the habit of pruning away the unhealthy bits so you can thrive.
After you finish watching this video, try this five minute experiment. Go through your social media feed. Scan through some comment threads, especially ones you didn't write, and block at least 10 useless commenters. Not because disagree with you, but because you now realize that they wasted your life by contributing less than nothing to the conversation. Let me know how it worked for you in the comments on this thread. I guess if you hate what I'm saying you could block me. I'd be fine with that because you know, hey.
Thanks for listening, and please share this with your friends. I think a lot of people could benefit from this habit. I know I have.