Can we extract ourselves from the digital world?

STEEPED BY SAMIA #23 | 07.16.23
Doom-scrolling, the ‘like’ button, and me promising to write more about digital culture things.

When Sufyan and I are in the car, I inevitably turn to him and say, “Did you hear about XYZ??” And Sufyan will reply with something like, “Whaaat?! No, I haven’t,” and I launch into all the details I know.

XYZ refers to any sort of absurd drama or amusing happening in pop culture (i.e. last summer, the drama between Amandla Stenberg and that white critic who reviewed Bodies, Bodies, Bodies) and pockets of the internet I lurk (i.e. Book Twitter). Sufyan asks good questions, as he does; so I’ll go down a rabbit hole of Twitter threads and articles to find out more.

I’m a serial doom-scroller;

It’s such a reflexive thing. I love to know what’s going on while also trying to avoid what’s going on, you feel? Mostly Twitter & Instagram, occasionally Facebook & LinkedIn, and it used to be TikTok, too, but I deleted the app off my phone in March.

Doom-scrolling has become an increasingly dissatisfying experience. Especially while social media platforms focus less on user experience & interaction, and more on brand content & advertising.

Meta just released the Threads app on the heels of another uninviting Twitter update; which is causing another wave of people scattering to Twitter alternatives like Mastodon and Bluesky. And now Threads.

I have not adopted Threads. It feels like just another place to doom-scroll, but time will tell (fomo or fizzle out: who will win?).

Social media & digital culture has become increasingly fascinating to me.

Like, Why do what we do online? And how has it become the way it is today?

While I can’t answer the above questions without detailing the long-winded recent history of the internet, I’m itching to write more about social media & digital culture on Steeped.

In the background of my work as a copywriter & brand strategist, I’m trying to learn more about our current social media landscape. And having insightful conversations with creatives, digital marketers, & entrepreneurs I know on how they’re navigating all of this.

Almost as if to figure out: How do we create meaningful storytelling that doesn’t get lost in the noise? And what am I really doing here?

Here are some ideas from my Notes app for a fun lil preview:

  1. “On offline-ness and offline friends”
  2. “So u want to write about urself online”
  3. “Early internet nostalgia as an older Gen Z”

15 years ago, we couldn’t imagine what digital norms would look ‘like’ today.

The ways we engage with the digital world and experience cultural shifts are made up of these micro-moments of individuality turned collectivity and macro systems interacting with each other. It’s how phrases like “girl dinner” pop up in my head, from Twitter showing me related TikToks and snippets of discourse, without me fully knowing what any of it means.

In The Social Dilemma (2020), an early Facebook engineer recounts the creation of the ‘like’ button as a means of acknowledgement / affirmation. But it eventually turned into this whole other thing, as we know: a metric, a measure of social value, a cause of self-consciousness, and more.

> “This post barely got any likes, so let’s just archive it.”

> “Ok, fine, but did you love it? Did you enjoy making it? Is it something you want people to know? Did you know that if you keep it, more people will see it in future years and they might love it? Social media is a time capsule.”

There’s an interesting in-betweenness of how we show up online nowadays.

— People as social media users, people as content creators, people as brands / businesses. A blur of all of this & more.

After college, I fell into being a regular-degular person online, who also shares about my writing and businesses I work with. Without fully committing to one or the other, I sometimes felt like my social media self came off as disjointed. I’d hesitate before posting something.

More on this someday, but I’m still figuring out how I want to show up in these digital spaces. In general, I’m making sure to: a.) share things I enjoy and b.) post whatever I want to post!

To conclude for now,

I’m reminded of this Steeped post on writing, specifically this part about the internet (note the extraction motif!):

“It all feels so connected and deliberate. As a collective, we’re being conditioned to create and view storytelling in a very specific way — and everything else doesn’t seem to have a place.

This, coupled with the very real way that we can’t extract ourselves from the pace of the internet: the volatile algorithm, the prioritization of short-form content, the evil dude(s) taking over social media platforms, to name a few.”

“The stories in my head have been quiet lately” | Steeped by Samia #12

When we think about the systems in place, the people profiting off our eyeballs viewing the page, the people who are increasingly not benefiting from it, we begin to unravel just wtf we’re doing here. And even then, nothing will really stop us (me included!) from our dates with Doom-Scroll. —S.A.

🔗 Steep On This:

💫 Catch Up:  

06.30.23 | Chasing a cat through town

STEEPED BY SAMIA #22: The world of Ghibli, a small town, & an elusive cat.

💌 About This Blog:

Steeped by Samia is a space where I can simmer on thoughts & curiosities about life, liminal spaces, digital culture, & more. Far too often, my writing ideas fizzle out in energy; I never get to see them to their full potential. While building my rhythm with writing, I want to share these stories with you. 

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