Thank you so much for the shout-out here, Charlotte! Or: sorry I have afflicted you with my nonsense ideas! (You can come back later and delete as applicable.)
Re. social media - I learned something about it a few years back, and it happened on Twitter. I spent ten years on that platform doomscrolling, feeling endlessly hopeless and very very stupid, every time I opened the app. All those smart people delivering those cynical zingers! I would never be that bleakly funny. All those smart people loudly and self-confidently being successful! I was not successful, and I was not self-confident. All those awful things going on in the world that everyone was yelling about! Instant downer.
But then the nature writer Robert Macfarlane arrived, and he immediately ignored all that stuff and started putting out tweets that were gentle, kind, wry, smart and thoughtful, and lots of people reacted in a big way, like they were clutching at a life-raft. He set his own tone, instead of trying to fit into the existing rage and cruelty and cynicism and sarcastic quote-shaming. And it instantly worked. He rewrote his corner of Twitter to fit what he wanted to see.
So I did it for a while too. I just posted threads of science stories that filled me with joy and wonder, and made a huge effort to just focus on the replies. In a really really small way, I did the same. It was a big mental effort, much much harder than just opening Twitter and reacting. Reacting to social media is a near-guaranteed way to feel shit about everything and everyone - with the irony that nobody *actually* feels that bad, they just *look* that way because they're just reacting to the same hopeless awful stuff. Social media amplifies extreme reactions, and the most extreme are the most negative. But sometimes, an "extreme reaction" can be people just being curious and nice to each other and filled with enthusiasm about things they only just learned about, that made them go "wow". That is rarer than the anger and rage-bait, but it's there....
And it can be created.
As you say - you can "add more in", and what you add can be *what you want to see*. There is powerful magic there.
So I did that until Mr Musk made the place extra-angry and awful. 🙃 (What a foolish waste.) But until then, it helped me grow my newsletter, and most of all, it taught me that using social media can feel good, even though it's hard work, especially at first. It doesn't mean social media can be A Good Thing For Everyone, I reckon the jury is out on that one, but it does make it tolerable to use and even a joyful thing at times...
Anyway. I'm rambling. Don't mind me. Habit of the extremely old.
You may enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e94Jnu2UgKQ It's a young, successful British graphic designer who chose, for over half a decade, to sleep in the woods. (I believe he's now married and living in a house again.) I loved this, because he looks the exact opposite of what you'd think when you hear the sentence "I sleep outside all year round". Wonderfully smart and normal and level-headed person doing a "crazy" thing. This endeth the lesson.
PS. Get a copy of Jenny Odell's "How To Do Nothing". That's my reading suggestion for you. Trust me on this.
Thank you so much for the shout-out here, Charlotte! Or: sorry I have afflicted you with my nonsense ideas! (You can come back later and delete as applicable.)
Re. social media - I learned something about it a few years back, and it happened on Twitter. I spent ten years on that platform doomscrolling, feeling endlessly hopeless and very very stupid, every time I opened the app. All those smart people delivering those cynical zingers! I would never be that bleakly funny. All those smart people loudly and self-confidently being successful! I was not successful, and I was not self-confident. All those awful things going on in the world that everyone was yelling about! Instant downer.
But then the nature writer Robert Macfarlane arrived, and he immediately ignored all that stuff and started putting out tweets that were gentle, kind, wry, smart and thoughtful, and lots of people reacted in a big way, like they were clutching at a life-raft. He set his own tone, instead of trying to fit into the existing rage and cruelty and cynicism and sarcastic quote-shaming. And it instantly worked. He rewrote his corner of Twitter to fit what he wanted to see.
So I did it for a while too. I just posted threads of science stories that filled me with joy and wonder, and made a huge effort to just focus on the replies. In a really really small way, I did the same. It was a big mental effort, much much harder than just opening Twitter and reacting. Reacting to social media is a near-guaranteed way to feel shit about everything and everyone - with the irony that nobody *actually* feels that bad, they just *look* that way because they're just reacting to the same hopeless awful stuff. Social media amplifies extreme reactions, and the most extreme are the most negative. But sometimes, an "extreme reaction" can be people just being curious and nice to each other and filled with enthusiasm about things they only just learned about, that made them go "wow". That is rarer than the anger and rage-bait, but it's there....
And it can be created.
As you say - you can "add more in", and what you add can be *what you want to see*. There is powerful magic there.
So I did that until Mr Musk made the place extra-angry and awful. 🙃 (What a foolish waste.) But until then, it helped me grow my newsletter, and most of all, it taught me that using social media can feel good, even though it's hard work, especially at first. It doesn't mean social media can be A Good Thing For Everyone, I reckon the jury is out on that one, but it does make it tolerable to use and even a joyful thing at times...
Anyway. I'm rambling. Don't mind me. Habit of the extremely old.
You may enjoy this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e94Jnu2UgKQ It's a young, successful British graphic designer who chose, for over half a decade, to sleep in the woods. (I believe he's now married and living in a house again.) I loved this, because he looks the exact opposite of what you'd think when you hear the sentence "I sleep outside all year round". Wonderfully smart and normal and level-headed person doing a "crazy" thing. This endeth the lesson.
PS. Get a copy of Jenny Odell's "How To Do Nothing". That's my reading suggestion for you. Trust me on this.
Another great piece!
Yes to all of this, I related HARD