A NEW AGE OF ENTERTAINMENT IS UPON US!
Day 1 no Tiktok: I have picked up writing again.
That’s overdramatic I have written a few things recently but nothing coherent enough to publish. This internet phenomenon is crazy though. I’ve never had any restrictions on social media or my screen time. It’s become quite evident to me in the past couple of months that I am actually heavily addicted to my phone. Since this form of “addiction” is one of the lesser evils, it’s easy for me to pass off as unimportant.
Although I am very dismayed at the things lost as a result of this app ban (which in my opinion is only temporary), I think I definitely needed this because no one else would have stopped me from turning on my phone every other ten minutes to mindlessly scroll. It’s funny to mourn something so objectively silly that, at most, has offered me a second camera roll and entertainment amid my frequent insomnia. Despite this, it was still quite jarring to pick up my phone right after my alarm rang and see the page “Sorry, Tiktok isn’t available right now” on my screen. Going cold turkey on any part of your daily routine for the past four years will be initially shocking. I guess I just feel a little dumb that this is really what is affecting me right now.
Mostly because of the rants and arcs of character development manifested through my 2000+ drafts that will be lost. But I suppose part of the sweetness of memories is that they fade. Nothing would be nostalgic if yellow vignettes did not eat away at the aged paper of one’s past. I remind myself that most things are not to be remembered through a lens that magnifies every hyperrealistic detail of a memory in oversaturated colors.
In any case, within the next few weeks or months, we will all adapt to the next social media fad, whether the app comes back or not! That’s just the way of the world…
I’m sure that by the time we reach Day 10 no Tiktok, we will have already progressed to a new version of internet brainrot and communicating. I wonder if this cycle will ever end and also if this restriction is ultimately a collective good. I mean, it’s already been a few hours, and I’ve written more on here than I have in the past three months, so who knows what will come out of this time.
(Hours later)
So that lasted 12 hours maximum. It's safe to say it’s all still here; maybe we could have gone without it for a little longer.
Nevertheless, I think that very brief period of reflection still did allow me to reconsider the way I spend my free time and how I am desperately in need of reconstructing my habits. I haven’t read a full book in 2 months, and I feel like my brain is beginning to rot out of my ears. I suppose I needed those several hours out of my day free of mindless scrolling to remember that (terrifying) so I will take it as a win.
