You are who you follow

For years, I was having brutal battles with social media. It was a love-hate relationship. Like everyone else, I love beautiful pictures, inspiring thoughts, and interesting stories. I am a visual person. But every time I lost myself in the virtual world, I found myself anxious and devastated. I was looking at everyone’s beautiful lives and as we all do, comparing it to mine.

After finding myself in a deep dark place I knew that I need to get out of there. A long crying, journaling, and counseling session with Marten was my usual weekly routine. It all brought great results – I was convinced that there is no point in comparing myself to others. I never see the full picture. Never see what is behind these happy moments. Never see the whole story.

I got my peace back.

But then, suddenly I was back at this rabbit hole. All over again.

If social media brings so much unhappiness to my life, then I should quit it. As I did. For some months. But then my friends said that they missed me, my pictures and stories. And I missed them. So, I came back.

This time I set myself ground rules: No social media at work, no social media after 8 p.m., only 15 minutes per day, only on weekends. A lot of different rules. Some of them worked, some not.

Somehow I observed the same scenario that repeated itself again and again:

I see myself in a dark place

I create a self-help plan

I follow it

I get better

I have a healthy relationship with social media

I allow myself to have more freedom

I go to the explore section for inspiration

I check my account to see how it is doing

I start counting the followers and likes I have

I see how little I have compared to other people

I start following celebrities/influencers/pretty-famous-rich people

I start comparing my life with theirs

I realize how ugly-boring-poor I am

I fall into the darkness of anxiety, shame, self-doubt

I go to the beginning…

And then one day I was reading one of my favorite books once again. “The life-changing magic of not giving a F*ck” by Sarah Knight.

And it made me think. Why do I care so much about pretty-famous-rich people? Why do I need to see daily their skincare routines, the food they eat, the fashion shows they attend, the new brand they discover, and the ridiculously expensive hotels they stay in? Somehow all these well-intended posts do not bring to my life anything but negativity.

What if I just unfollow everyone who doesn´t have another job besides being social media “influencer”? What if I unfollowed all brands (With some rare exceptions of course)? What if I followed real people? People who really influence – scientists, writers, politicians, activists, journalists, engineers, artists. And of course, my friends – who have the most direct influence on my life.

That is what I did. Big cleaning. I unfollowed many many accounts and in stead followed only friends I care about and some other inspiring people like Michelle Obama and Maria Ocasio Cortez.

But it didn’t help much. I was still anxious and dissatisfied with my life every time I opened my phone.

One evening I came home, and Marten invited me to watch the documentary “The Social Dilemma” (Highly recommend). He proudly stated that after watching 20 minutes he deleted all his social media apps.

Very intriguing.

After 20 minutes I was shocked.

I knew that Instagram, Facebook, and other similar “great stuff” were created to be like slot machines. But what I didn't know is that while I am scrolling, the supercomputers are in real-time analyzing my behavior and producing personalized feed to keep my attention and feed me advertisements to eventually form my behavior. So basically it is my flawed brain versus the most powerful supercomputers with the most recent discoveries from neuroscience and psychology.

We all know who wins this game.

Does it mean that my shopping lists and my dream travel destinations are not created by me? Does it mean that my thoughts are not mines? Does it mean that I allowed big daddies in their corner offices to form my identity and my needs?

After taking some time to think it through I decided to finally delete my biggest source of unhappiness - Instagram.

All my pictures of 8 years, all the brightest moments, all the people I connected with, all my 379 followers – all gone.

.....

So it has been about a month and I regret nothing.

My life is better. Much better. Richer. Calmer.

In a museum, I don´t think how to take the best pictures of the exhibition. I simply observe, enjoy, be still in silence.

In a restaurant, I look Marten in the eyes, observe the place and people. And when food comes, I take one shot to share with family. But it is not about staging and perfect light. It is about emotion.

On a train, I look out of the window and get bored.

At work during breaks, I read articles.

In the bath, I read poetry.

To gather fashion or Interior inspiration I sometimes take a glass of wine and go to the blogs where I get to know the concept behind every picture.

And when there is something in my life that I want to share with my friends and family, then I open WhatsApp or Messenger and send it to the person I was thinking about. And then I get the comment or like I really value and need.

Sometimes when I get lost in my old scrolling habit, the only possible solution is to do it in Mail app. Well, I don't get that many mails. At least not enough to get me hooked.

I still use Facebook, just because I still want to see my Friends major life updates, connect with people in a town that is still new for me and share my blog posts. But I do it only from my desktop computer and only a couple of times a week. I guess Facebook's main audience is not people like me, so somehow, I don't feel so trapped there. Who knows, maybe it will change in the future and then one must adjust.

And I understand that I can not separate myself from all the influence of the external world. But this story is my attempt to take a bit more control of it.

So here it is.

Happy unscrolling!

And to illustrate. This is the proof of how bad my situation was. It was lovely summer evening. I was drinking wine on a terrace and having a nice conversation with Marten. Then I noticed that my outfit, the glass of wine and the whole scenery is so Instagrammable, that I had Marten to take 45 pictures (I counted) of me posing. So instead of enjoying the moment, I irritated Marten with my expectation of perfect picture and lost my peace.

And I didn't post it. In the end I wasn't sure if any of it was perfect enough.