Social Media is a Vampire
I'm shocked awake at 4:37 a.m. by the sound of someone in my apartment yelling about something. What? I live alone. Like ALONE alone. Who the fuck?
Struggling up on the couch (I don't have a bed but a really comfortable couch which is good because it takes up less space in the studio and there's far less temptation to invite a potential sex partner over cuz, uh, couch?) I can see not just a someone but a crowd of someone's all congregated in my place like a loose convention. I pop on a lamp.
A young white guy with a neckbeard rushes over. "Hey, Don! I know you're not going believe this. A guy in Florida was arrested...ARRESTED...for posting on his Facebook that he thought DeSantis was Hitler."
"What? Who are you?"
A young woman with a nose-ring (the bisexual badge) squats down. "Nonbinary rights are human rights! I'm a pansexual nonbinary who uses ze and zo pronouns and you WILL use them or else you support the genocide of the LGBQTA++++ community!"
A middle-aged guy in an ill-fitting suit and knit tie shoved her to the side, grabbed me by the shoulders and screamed "SOCIALISM IS COMING!"
I jumped off the couch and did a quick survey. There were nearly thirty people in my cramped apartment. All of them were engaged in contentious arguments. Ad hominem attacks were tossed out like confetti. A woman with a MAGA hat was yelling at a young black guy about something. An older black woman was yelling at him, too, about something else.
From the bathroom I heard a familiar voice cry out "Where's the plunger? I need the plunger!" and out strode none other than Donald Trump, a bit of toilet paper stuck to his waistband. "No one go in there for at least thirty minutes!" He looked downright proud of his joke despite no one laughing.
"Wait. WAIT! HOLD ON!" I barked. Everyone got quiet and looked at me like I had lost my mind. "Who are you people and what are you doing in my apartment?"
Trump took the center of the room, hands on hips like that cartoon baby with the genius mind and slightly British accent. "You invited us." He held up his smartphone and the screen shone black and blue with the Twitter logo. Everyone else held up their phones and the room wash dazzled by blue birds on screens.
A week past and while some left, others always came by to take their places. I tried to work but the nonstop arguing was maddening. I couldn't concentrate. Slowly, I found it difficult to think about anything but what these people were arguing about. I started arguing back about things that didn’t or shouldn’t matter to me—conspiracy theories about government, celebrity missteps, reductive stereotypes of any and everyone. So much of what these intruders were enraged about was about things and ideas that weren’t even a part of my daily existence and the obsession with them grew.
Two weeks later I found myself in someone else's apartment barking about the dangers of wokeness along with ten or twenty others all yawping about their own niche rage. I had been fully assimilated.
✶
A few years ago, I dumped my social media accounts. Faceborg was making me dislike people I’d never met. Instagram had me taking far too many pictures of myself and spending time comparing my life to the curated lives of people I’d never meet on boats. Twitter was just insane with a vomit of constant rage. I dabbled into TikTok and Snapchat—neither lasted on my iPhone for longer than a day.
The only toe-dip I kept was the Literate Ape Twitter account used to promote articles and books. Except I couldn’t not read the stuff. Scrolling through the nonsense, the arguments, the bullshit. I recently had an epiphany. None of these people on Twitter were people I’d hang out with in the real world let alone have an actual conversation with. Their need to dominate with their certainty about everything from COVID lockdowns to CRT in schools to trans-rights was fodder online but these issues don’t really affect me personally. Why was I paying so much attention to them and how was that payment changing my own behavior?
These were opinions I invited in. Like a vampire, social media doesn’t accidentally show up in your apartment. You invite it in and it sucks away your desire to read books by serious people, watch films of importance, take a walk without being distracted by your phone. Think about it for a moment—you’re out for a walk in the sunshine or rain or whatever the weather and, unless you have a call or text from someone you actually know, you aren’t staring at the screen.
Sure, social media can be curated to only the info and opinions you’d like but that’s like making the distinction that opioids are really good for headaches, too.
✶
Months later, as I stood in some woman’s home, arguing about the existence of man-made climate change with a portly Latino on my left and holding court with a thirteen-year-old kid pretending to be much older on the merits of centrism, I stopped. Yes, this woman had invited me in but I wasn’t a vampire (or at least I didn’t want to be). I stopped. Why was I arguing with these strangers in yet another stranger’s home?
“I’m sorry,” I said to her. “I’m disinviting myself.”
“You mean you’re leaving?”
“I am. You didn’t ask for my opinion. You just invited me in and were suddenly confronted with it. I think for now I’ll limit my opinion to my own platforms that you can choose to read or in person if you and I are actually having a conversation.”
“What about them?” she asked and motioned around the room to the others.
“C’mon. Let’s go get some coffee and talk about something we both are interested in.”
