#74: My current relationship with the internet and why it's changing
'The internet is too great of a thing to just be a mere & mindless consumer of it.'
Ever since the pandemic started, I’ve been feeling the need to protect myself more on the internet. I don’t mean this in the sense of data and personal security because that is already a given. I’m thinking more on self-preservation and integrity. If I am going to be an active consumer of it, I want to be as intentional about this as much as I can.
But it’s not easy. Like most things that are addictive in nature, the internet is alluring and is extremely satisfying to use, both from an entertainment and an intellectual perspective. It was true then with Livejournal, Xanga & MySpace as it is now with Instagram, Youtube and all the other streaming services with terrific user experiences. I started my career in the internet, after all. I didn’t know it at that time but building blogs, publishing work and tinkering around started the foundation of my professional life now. The internet made me a designer, I am a designer because of it.
I grew up with the internet. It is a part of my life, in the best and the worst way possible.
If I want to maintain a productive and relatively healthy relationship with it moving forward, I needed boundaries. I needed to set some ground rules, because the internet landscape of yesterday is not at all the same as it is now, and in the near future. This getting more and more obvious everyday.
But there’s no need to look at this as zero-sum1, what good would that do? I’m thinking about this as an opportunity to calibrate and to gain a bit more control. The internet is here to stay and so are the careers (and lives) that will continue to be built on top of it. I’m staying here, on this path but with a different point-of-view. What got me here isn’t what’s going to take me to where I need to go next. That’s why I’m writing this: In order for that to happen, things have to change on my end.
This is my strategy so far.
Avoid reels/tiktok videos. Of all the trends that’s been going on lately, this is by far my least favorite. I have way less tolerance with short-term videos, especially on mobile devices. It hurts my brain after a few minutes and I get so little substance out of it, compared to its long-form counterparts.
Stay away from Facebook and X/Twitter. Quite a no-brainer, both are widely known to be filled with toxicity and hate all around. From my experience, it just isn’t worth it anymore. Four years off of X/Twitter and the only thing I missed is the few friends I’ve connected with on it.
Make email my primary communication for long-distance relationships. Long form, slow, personal and thoughtful, email checks almost all of the boxes I have for the relationships I intend on keeping. Aside from its low-key and unassuming nature, it’s also private in a way social media isn’t. I’ve had some luck on this—now… if I can convince my Messenger-loving family to do the same, I’ll be set.
Don’t turn Instagram into a diary. Every time I look back at the things I’ve posted, the ones I regret the most are the emotional-driven ones. Not because they were regretful moments in real life, on the contrary, I’m glad I had them. In retrospect, I just don’t think it was necessary to share them with strangers on the internet to that extent. It’s okay to get personal. It’s another to extend a bit of my soul to a platform that couldn’t care less.
Focus on the craft, not on the drama. This is a big one and required a bit of a mental heavy lifting. The internet is great for many things—sharing your work, your passion, your ‘thing’ is one of them. When it comes to sharing and creating content, I realized I get a lot of energy out of this and the opposite for my personal life. This is a lens I’ve been trying out in the last years and have been responsible for really making my digital life a lot more fun and satisfying.
Go where the ROI is. Tech people always love saying this: If the product is free, it means you are the product. I’ve learned to accept this for a fact and I’ve understood the tradeoffs I’m making. If I have to be somewhere, there better be an advantage to it for me, like a purpose. There has to be a Return-of-Investment, not specifically in terms of finance, although this is obviously a nice outcome. ROI, in this case, can be in the forms of intellectual growth, education, luck surface, mental and emotional satisfaction and utility. Otherwise, why I am giving my precious time, money and energy away?
Consider this strategy as a beta. It’s always changing, it’s always evolving just like I am and the way I interact with the world around me. A lot of things are in disarray right now, especially for us tech workers. The lines can be extremely blurred between what is real and what isn’t.
I find that if I don’t act proactively on this, I risk drowning and losing myself in the process. My work is built on top of the internet and I don’t see that changing anytime soon. I love what I do, even the times of uncertainty.
And I look at everything I put my energy on as investments, most especially my digital life. This is just an exercise of caution, it’s way for me to protect an investment I take a lot of pride on: myself and my work.
When I started thinking about this, I was under the impression that this will be one of the best things I’ve ever do to safeguard my future. The more connected the world gets, the easier it is to get lost in it, like a fish getting caught up in a current. We shouldn’t just accept things as they are and be done with it.
We should still keep certain things as sacred as we allow it to be. Digital experiences are no different. Evaluate, reflect, discern and take action.
The internet is too great of a thing to just be a mere & mindless consumer of it.
Life is too great of a thing to just be a mere & mindless consumer of it.
Thank you for reading working title,
Nikki
If you have a spare moment, I’d love to hear your opinion on my newsletter. This will help me understand what to write about and curate better. I am also on Notes, where I post previews and premature ideas that fuel my writing streaks.
It’s a situation in which a gain of one would mean the complete loss of another