The Strange Addiction of Posting Stuff Online

This is kind of an update to my last post. Maybe I'll post more about this as time goes on. I just know that I feel like I need to put my thoughts somewhere.

And that's what this post is about. Why the fuck am I addicted to posting stuff online?

I started reading blogs and news sites to keep up on what's going on in the world, and many times after reading a story I want to post a comment about it, or post the story to a feed on some social media site with my thoughts on the article. So I signed up for one of the news sites that still has a comment section and fired away with my thoughts on a news story. It felt good to say my piece and put it into the universe.

And then the old familiar rush of getting into an online argument began again. I posted my thoughts about politics online, and like chum thrown into the ocean, the sharks took the bait. Within minutes, I was high on arguing about politics online.

I'm not kidding. It's a high. I literally get an adrenaline rush from it.

Why am I like this? I don't want to be like this. I know that the years I spent having online arguments as my primary mode of social interaction fucked up my ability to talk to people in the real world. 

While typing all of that out, I decided to Google "why am I addicted to arguing online" and found a few articles about it. I guess I'm not alone in admitting that this is an addiction.

I found this article in Psychology Today that said of trolls and what they refer to as "troll-lite" (people that just enjoy arguing online) that said of us, "they are more narcissistic, Machiavellian, psychopathic and sadistic." But I don't feel like I'm any of those things. 

However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I do have a need to be right all the time. And I also feel like everyone else should also be right all the time. If not, I should correct them.

Yeah, that would explain the addiction. It's a usually safe and anonymous way to get those two needs met. I get the feeling of superiority of feeling like I'm right and telling everyone else that they're wrong.

Fuck me, that's not a characteristic I want to have. That's definitely making it hard to make friends with people.

I've been staring at this screen for the past five minutes wondering if this characteristic is from trauma or something I was born with. I think it's because of my experience with religion. I was in the Independent Fundamental Baptist church when I was a teenager and if you know anything about that church, they do feel the need to be right about everything, and letting you know that you're wrong is a matter of keeping you from burning for eternity. 

Maybe that's it. Maybe it's something else. Maybe it's a combination of things. All I know is, this is something I need to change.

So I Deleted My Social Media

I deactivated my Facebook account and deleted the Mastodon and Reddit apps from my phone.

It was on October 5th that I did all of that, and it was ironically, because I talked to someone on Reddit.

A post on the site was talking about cellphone usage. I posted a comment about Stolen Focus and someone said that they read the book too, and suggested that I also read Digital Minimalism. I got a copy from my library and read it.

The book talks a lot about social media addiction. It cited an excellent article from political blogger Andrew Sullivan where he talked about what social media was doing to him in 2016, a full four years before I realized that I had a problem with it.

Digital Minimalism also discussed how to break free from social media addiction. The first step is to go completely without social media for thirty days. I'm three days away from that now.

The only social media I did keep was TikTok and YouTube. For reasons that I'm unsure of, I was always distracted by social media that uses reading, but can't say the same for the social media that uses videos. So far so good on that. It hasn't made me replace videos for the social media that I missed. I watch videos occasionally on my down time, but don't spend nearly the amount of time that I did scrolling Facebook and Reddit.

The good part of this is that I feel a lot less anxious than I used to. The lack of doomscrolling will do that to you. I know there's some stuff going on in Israel and Palestine, and the UAW just ended all their auto strikes, but otherwise I don't see a lot else going on when I read from news sites. And not seeing assholes in the comment sections of the stories I read has been nice as well.

But there is one down side to all of this and it's bothered me worse than I thought it would.

I don't have any friends to talk to.

My biggest regret of my social media addiction is that I let my real life friendships whither and fade away while I stayed inside and let arguing with idiots and trolls become my new social life. I was such a damn fool for doing so.

I should have worked on keeping the friends I had. I should have worked on making new ones. What I shouldn't have done is spend my entire 30s arguing with assholes on the internet.

In the past I would post when I was having a bad day on Facebook or somewhere else and I'd get sympathetic comments from total strangers. Now that I'm done doing that I wish I had some friends to tell about my shit day. I talk to my wife, but something about having a friend to vent to just feels different. I don't know why, but talking to a spouse just isn't enough sometimes. You need a friend.

So I guess that's why I'm here. Until I can make some new friends and/or reconnect with old ones, I gotta put my thoughts somewhere. 

Ironically since I won't be sharing this to any social media, there probably won't be anyone that sees this, lol. At least I can write down how I'm doing.