I Used to be in a Cult: Epilogue

 After I read Digital Minimalism I began taking steps to get off social media. As I said earlier, I still kept TikTok and YouTube because I didn’t feel the same addiction to video content as I did the mediums that use the written word. Maybe that’s because I’m less likely to argue with other people when I’m on them. I also access far less political content on them. But I’m not everyone. So many people got radicalized through YouTube, like Brenton Tarrant, who before shooting the mosque in New Zealand had spent a twenty four hour period going through the recommended videos sent to him by YouTube’s algorithm on autoplay. Yet for me, I’m fine with watching videos about why The Crow is the greatest movie ever (they’re right!), cute cat videos, cooking videos, or instructional videos on how to change the brake pads on my car.

I rejoined Reddit a few months ago. I told myself it was for research for a book I’m working on, but I think it was more because I was bored at work and wanted something to do. But the written word platform started to get me back into old habits so I’m going to have to delete the app on my phone. I don’t want to get sucked back into that cult.

I’ve spent the last few months trying to repair the real world relationships that I had lost. Friends that I had neglected. Friends that I told to never talk to me again because their politics sucked. Some welcomed me back with open arms. Some are busy and don’t have time to go out (such is life in your 40s). Others I damaged so badly that they still don’t want to talk to me. I’m even reading books that teach me how to talk to people-a skill that I had abandoned years ago and need to relearn after spending all my “social life” online.

Ironically, after I post this on my blog I’m going to return to Facebook. Not to argue with idiots, but to go to local groups to make friends outside of it. When I had to take a good hard look at myself, I had to ask what made me friends with people in the past. It was music. Punk rock, specifically. So I made a discord account for local fans of punk rock, and I’ll post on my hometown pages that if anyone else is a fan of punk rock to join the discord so we can make arrangements to meet up in real life, listen to some good music, have a few beers and some weed, and chill out. After that, my account is going to be deactivated once again. I don’t need an online community, but I will use social media temporarily to create a real one.

After my mom died, I began to take stock of my life, as one does when they lose someone close to them. I was with my mom when she died on her hospital bed, one of her hands holding mine, and the other one holding my brother’s. She was too weak to speak and even if she wasn’t, her intubation tube that was keeping her alive would have prevented it. I don’t know what she was thinking, but I can guarantee that she wasn’t thinking, “I wish I had spent more time on Facebook.” None of us are going to be wishing that we spent more time arguing with idiots, shitposting, doomscrolling, or neglecting the people that love us so we can spend just one more day in front of a screen.

One of the friendships that I ruined was a friend from high school. He was one of my Army buddies, too. I joined the Army after 9/11 just so I’d be in the same reserve unit as him so I could watch his back if he deployed. He went regular Army after our first tour while I stayed in the Reserves. So he was one of those real life friends that I was only talking to online. After Trump was elected we had an argument about politics and even though it wasn’t the final reason why I told him to fuck off forever, it did start a chain of events that led me to do so. I pissed away a twenty year friendship because the algorithm put us in separate cults. I got in touch with him last year and he said he didn’t want to be friends because of what I did, but he did tell me that he had just left the military and wanted to move some place where there wasn’t people because he wanted to be away from everyone. I knew what that meant because I had long thought about doing the same. He wanted to spend his days in isolation, staring at a screen, with a fake online community that wouldn’t even notice if he stopped posting. If you’re that friend and you’re reading this, don’t do it, brother. Don’t be like me. Go make friends in the real world and leave the cult. The cult will never love you back and you’ll just end up miserable, alone, and wondering what the fuck happened to all the friends you used to have and why you don’t know how to make friends anymore. I’m speaking entirely from experience.