Which way will you run, when it's always all around you?
The Turning Feral Devotional - Day 63
Day 63: I had a talk with a social media influencer. I was asking her how she copes with all of the faceless voices and opinions that swirl around the content she posts (hunting), which seem made up of equal parts respect and equal parts visceral hate. She takes it mostly in stride because the good often outweighs the bad, but the bad… well, the bad is just so over-the-top egregious that it stings, but the family threats and snide commentary just have to be ignored as best it can — though it still takes a mental toll.
But, that got me thinking. It’s everywhere. Every conceivable direction you look technology, social influence, and the creator economy – a world that has a lot of good to it, but also carries an outsized bead of negativity - are there. I naively thought I could avoid it all together, where for years I refused a focused social presence. But after some time, like most, I caved. The gravitational pull to leverage social media for my own “brand” felt like a necessity and that pull was eventually too strong to resist.
So, here I am, building a brand around adult-onset self-sustained living, using the very tools that engulf our creative mind-space on a daily basis. The very tools that so often keep us from living the lives we desire and follow online. Ironic? 100%. But, where else can you run when it’s always all around you? The answer is ‘no where.’ Social media, byte-size distractionary reels, and micro-second attention spans are what we destined for if we want to succeed in brand creation. The people and minds have spoken and this method of media consumption will continue to metastasize.
So what to do as a person with one foot stuck in the 1800’s playing fur trapper and the other begrudgingly stuck up Jake Paul’s ass? I say look down. With iffy and questionable projections of reality consuming all breathable space we need to ground ourselves in things that are actually real. Touching physical ground, planting seeds, raising animals, eating food that we process ourselves are all ways to help plant roots that can’t be shaken by the dystopian lure of social media. The algorithms feeding you equal parts good and bad content* are here to stay, so cut through the fog, recognize when content is being shoved through a feeding tube against your will, and go outside with your phone off – even if it’s just for five minutes a day.
*(for those curious, outside of hunting, my algorithms feed me sanitarily-questionable Indian food stall reels and anger-inducing dancing tiktok families)
Daily Prompt: How has social media influenced your life? Is it a net positive? Negative? Are the accounts you follow ones that encourage you to live a more grounded and real life or are they only serving to pull you further away from your dreams?:
Motivational Passage:
“He thought of the telescreen with its never-sleeping ear. They could spy upon you night and day, but if you kept your head you could still outwit them. With all their cleverness they had never mastered the secret of finding out what another human being was thinking. . . . Facts, at any rate, could not be kept hidden. They could be tracked down by inquiry, they could be squeezed out of you by torture. But if the object was not to stay alive but to stay human, what difference did it ultimately make? They could not alter your feelings; for that matter you could not alter them yourself, even if you wanted to. They could lay bare in the utmost detail everything that you had done or said or thought; but the inner heart, whose workings were mysterious even to yourself, remained impregnable.”
― George Orwell, 1984
Rewilding Action: Turn your phone off. Do it. Power it down and go spend an hour outside. Can you even think of the last time you did that? I bet not. While you’re out there count the times you feel a phantom vibration in your pocket from some non-existant notification, the times you pull out your powered-off phone to snap a picture of some benign moment, and then notice the itchy feeling you get as you come closer to the end of your hour. If you’re anything like me you are going to feel icky and frustrated at the power that device has over you. Accept that, and make the practice of fully powering down and being outside a regular thing.