“help, I don’t know what I’m looking at.” These were my exact thoughts going into my newsfeed on youtube. The over-saturation of reels between the normal-length/long videos and all those moving images make me fastly fatigued. Somehow youtube and every other platform has become the result of tiktok. I do not own a tiktok page nor have I downloaded the app. Unfortunately me a millennial, my boomer mother asked me to install the app for her, so she could follow my little nephew’s latest fun content. I felt stupid but did it anyway, knowing now if I wouldn’t do it for her, she’s going to ask another friend to install this app for her anyway. So with great disappointment in my body, I installed this damn shit on her old iPhone5. That was about two years ago.
I told her right away, I wouldn’t be able to help her out much with this app, because I don’t know much about it and I refuse to partake in this nonsense crap. Today, November 2022, it seems like I’m one of the few who hasn’t succumbed yet under the psychological pressure of social media’s culture. I think to myself: Am I already that old lady today for not wanting to follow the youth- movement? What is going to happen 20-30 years from now with my old senses? Is this dystopian cyber-world happening faster than we can imagine? Are we growing older faster due to these colorful numbing loud bold and rapid content? Is this life actually ever going to slow down? Or am I forever lost in this abnormal fast-changing social-media herd?
I had a twitter in 2010, I deleted that twitter in 2013 as none of my friends were using this place (although that was not the reason for deleting ) I was pretty much using twitter as a digital dairy with no other purpose than grasping on tiny moments of my life. When I decided to delete this long wall of complaints and random thoughts, I figured there wasn’t much need for political discussions on the internet anyway. It all felt like you needed to befriend the important guys or converse using the top used hashtags to make it happen. So facebook actually copied these hashtags right away and that was just cringe. It even changed our goddamn language. People actually use the word hashtag followed by a word or a sentence in every day-life. I felt weird. Especially when you see television programs pick up on those silly trends and the day that the news on television started using facebook images as a newsworthy feature, just made me sick. Everything is one big dump.
I watched the world crumble around me, into a gathering of fake connectivity, lost identity, little individuality and a desperate need for constant attention and approval. A world of individual pretenders, calling themselves influences. The amount of cringe I actually feel for that word in particular is beyond measurable: influencers. What a joke. To think that this socia-media world is the foundation for younger generations frightens me enormously. The sheeple-mentality will be absolute.
Remember that time when everyone (except me of course) used a filter with apolitical message on their profile picture on facebook? Well that shit made it pretty obvious for me who was truly a follower and who didn’t give a shit about public appearances.
I’m sure it’s not enough to keep kids off these platforms anymore, by measuring their screen-time, it almost doesn’t matter anymore what you give your children to play with, because when most of their schoolfriends are doing this social comparing-game of valuing themselves based on numbers of likes and whatnot, it’s all going downhill for their natural senses, their individuality, the meaning of connectivity etc etc.
My nephew is 18 years old, told me he want a nose-job. Said it like that’s absolutely no big deal. He clearly doesn’t need one. But he’s set his mind on it. I’m just terrified that the kardashians and such Hollywood standards are absolutely detrimental for people’s self-esteem. I hope there is some natural rural habitat left in the future. I don’t see myself be anything other than a natural human being, growing old with lines of stretchmarks and wrinkles on my skin. I don’t want to be cut to unhealthy beauty-standards and I don’t want to follow the latest fashion trends either. I simply do not care about it all.
This whole fast food, fast fashion, fast everything is giving such headache. Not only by the enormous toxic waste they produce and the smell lingering by the mcDeaths and the Primarks in this society. Wasting this beautiful planet world to more destruction, treating (third world country-) humans like garbage, destroying natural habitats for wildlife, polluting our oceans and adding toxic gasses to our air. Such a waste we create. And for what? Money? Fame? Being relevant? 100K likes? When is this madness going to stop? When will we wake up to what is left of real value in life on this planet? The things we treat with little to no respect says a lot about us.
I’ve distanced myself from these harms as much as possible, I lived a life mostly as a hermit. I found truth and a moral baseline in veganism and the zen it gives my soul to stay away from harming others. Cooking slow and mindfully, preparing your legumes and vegetables in many creative ways, knowing what it does to your body, fueling that body with nutrients instead of mindless intake of stuff. I stayed away from smoking and drug abuse. Stopped consuming alcohol and felt like living as a monks is the example of true peaceful bliss. And I always find myself going back to wanting to own less, and be more mindful.
I haven’t been a physical minimalist for a while now, but I want it back, it’s a mindset that keeps me sane and keeps me coming back to my senses. I want to clear out my living space again and feel free of stuff. It’s a basic understanding that; the less I own, the more I use, the more I make and the more content I feel.
I have been away from a long time and I wondered if I would ever come back to this blog. But I needed to write again and to vent and maybe someone is still coming back or following this page or simply is a new reader. I hope to share a bit more, but I don’t like making promises anymore to anyone other than myself.
the ethical minimalist 