The Echo Chambers of Social Media

I quit. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook. 6 years back. And it's been the best decision I ever made for my peace.

I quit. Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook. 6 years back. And it's been the best decision I ever made for my peace.

19-year-old I had no idea why I was taking that drastic step when all the cool kids were on the platform. Careers made, millionaires placed on the top. Why are you quitting, boy?

At 25 years, I can put my feet on the table and bang the desk and say there is not a thing in the world I'd trade in for that decision at 19. The benefit of hindsight is beautiful.

Sure, I missed out on plenty of things ‘online’. Friends moving to foreign lands, fomo of stories, the new events in town, being in some jackass's famous reel. How many did I actually care about here intrinsically? Honestly, all. But if I scratch the surface and go two layers deep, how many do I actually cared about? None. They move no needles in my life except create echo chambers.

And the terrifying part of these echo chambers is that the voice that echoes within it wasn't even my own. The tilting shift came when I became a little cognizant of what I was feeling WHILE scrolling the ‘feed’. Post after post, some sad, some happy, some disgusting. My mind wasn't developed enough to discern the emotion from the material. So I became the emotion. And it hurt. And that emotion is exactly how you get marketed, targeted, and resold.

None of the dreams that were manufactured in my head were of my own, they were rented from places online I lived in. There was no breathing room for my thoughts to sprout and seeds to distribute. There was no ‘aakrosh’ in my soul.

I tried the limit-your-use way. And boy does it suck. It goes from a full blown addiction to a slow-drip poison. Which is worse?

be your echo chamber.

The quality of conversations dropped so drastically, I was spellbound by my lack of thinking. Everything pulled to the direction of cut this off. You have the power.

And the terrific part of these echo chambers is that there are mini echo chambers in the womb of the original echo chamber. It's exactly like a marketers funnel. Optimized to the T. It drips the poison of mind-numbing entertainment scheduled every time you open the app. Sexy hot silicone-laid people, check. The dancing clowns, check. The over-the-top do it all be happy, check. Every scroll, every double-tab, every bookmark, every piece of knowledge you stored but never used, ends up in the ever expanding cesspool of brain-space.

Again, it was a willing choice to sacrifice the good that social media brought to steer clear of the mindfucking aspect of it.

It is not just Gen-Z or Gen-X affected by it. The majority is millenials, people the age of my parents. Take one glance at their social media feed, politics, sadhgurus, how to not become a cockroach in the next life, you get the point.

I’ve seen older people’s timelines be plastered with porn. Find God, uncles. Moksh ke samay me kaha nagn log dekh rahe ho. Disgusting.

And don’t even get me started on the hellhole that is LinkedIn. Bro, get a life. I don’t wanna see a corporate executive’s man-tits hanging out as they thank the next airline massage therapist for their quality service on the platform.

Amazing friends of mine have pestered me to get back, you can make so much money on this platform, that platform. But there is this voice deep-within which just does not budge. ‘That is not you, Aman’, it says. And I bow to that voice keeping me in check. I have enough proof to see that The Voice has always had my best interests.

The Voice always had my best interests.

It also raises so many questions in my heart. Will I ever join any platform (excluding Twitter) ever again? What will be the light that shines so bright inside me that I will have no other option but to share myself online?

Part of me has this fear of being seen. Rich and anonymous? The other part of me knows I will kill it, I will annihilate the opportunity. It’s a sensitive balance.

The creator economy is not to be ignored, for sure. What kinda creator though? Mujra toh humse na ho paaye. Zyada gyaan I used to give, hit a roadblock internally, now I try and execute the gyaan, rather than dish it out.

You see how you entered my echo chamber in this blog? Exactly. Welcome to my small echo chamber.

Welcome to my echo chamber

Now zoom out and assume this was the echo chamber of Instagram. Array of emotions. No time to digest any of them.

You are on your own. Program or be programmed. (Homage DR22). Neither the platforms nor the executives have the best for you in mind. From unhinged targeted advertising to rigging elections, these platforms are notorious in doing whatever it takes to make the green bag greener.

Twitter, irrespective of how turbulent its history has been, somehow still managed to be the closest to truth. It is a fine, blurry line. But I found immense internal growth there. The positive to negative echo chamber ratio has been in check with Twitter, at least for me.

S/O to some of my favs and OGs from Twitter: AJAC, DR22, Tej Dosa.

I still opt to be in and out of Twitter too. The frenzy gets wild. Neither am I interested in the news. From being a massive proponent of being in the know, to being in the now.

From being a massive proponent of being in the know, to being in the now

Touch grass, take all your online connections offline, have fun in reality that is not virtual. Feel things, witness things, build things, distribute things, give it all a meaning. Kya pata kal ho na ho.

On to the next echo chamber.