Five (or Three) Years Without Social Control Media
Social Control Media is waning. It 'feels' like many people quit it (if not delete it, then lessen or stop participation). There seems to be no exception to that, not even Mastodon. It's surviving, barely, but not growing [1, 2]. Diaspora? Almost nobody even hears about it anymore. What I said 3+ years ago turned out to be pretty accurate, having already ceased to "engage" in Twitter (2020), a platform of "cancel culture" and corporate bullies.
Recently I saw many articles about people who quit Social Control Media (or Social Control Networks) and spoke of it using the terminology of addiction/rehabilitation. They speak publicly on the matter, perhaps wishing for other people to be aware of what they went through and how better off they are now. A few days ago even GNU/Linux blogs had at least 2 such stories. People spoke of withdrawal symptoms and eventually about the happiness or contentment associated with complete abandonment. Those people didn't lose any (real) friends; Social Control Media does not make friendships, it only "flags" them (as if affirmation of a friendship requires approval by MElon or Mark Kapo-Berg). It also takes up so much time that people lack the desire to actually meet friends (or, if they do, they're busy staring at some tiny screen in something like a coffee shop... instead of speaking to the person in front of them, just across the table).
What's at stake here isn't just distraction; it's about health*.
The other day I noticed that after more than 15 years Glyn Moody quit X (Twitter) and his last "tweets" didn't have many "impressions" anyway. Dr. Moody too understood it was time to move on. Will you join him**? █
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* Having just mentioned what notifications do to a person (especially when trying to sleep), Ryan told me in IRC: "Nothing aggravates me more than the phone making noise while I'm trying to sleep. I just keep mine on Do Not Disturb all the time with two exceptions. A whitelist of about 50 contacts and people who call twice within 5 minutes. Everything else is silenced and the SPAM filter/challenge is set to High. It doesn't wake me up that often because most people have no legitimate reason to contact me. I deliberately leave it out of reach while I'm sleeping. I remember when nobody had much in their bedroom except maybe an alarm clock and a small TV. The TV never made noise you didn't want unless you accidentally rolled over on the remote. When I'm sleeping, I do not want to be bothered unless it is an emergency. Unless someone is dying or the house is on fire, don't bother me while I'm asleep. I refuse to operate without at least 7-8 hours of good sleep. Unless something happens where I have a hard time going to sleep which is like once every several years. Or something so important that I cannot miss it happens at a time I'm normally in bed. But getting up after 2-3 hours and chugging coffee as a matter of habit is a good way to die years early. I've had some awful jobs but only one of them was "on call" and they only ever called me during normal business hours and asked me if I wanted to pick up a shift that evening. Preventing someone from sleep is a form of torture. I have no idea why anyone would allow such a device into their bedroom without putting boundaries on it."
** Nowadays I reach him by E-mail, which he advertises:
