Since mid-Jan or so, I’ve been on a bit of a social media break. Not so much from consuming, but from creating. I find that when I’m not posting anything on Instagram, I’m less invested in what’s going on. I wouldn’t say I’m at odds with social media though. As a self-proclaimed internet culture critic, I like to think I’m above getting sucked into the vortex. Or so I tell myself.
But lately, I’ve been noticing my mood and energy drop every time I open the app.
I find myself feeling despondent more than anything else. And despondent is such a weird feeling – mainly because if I were to ask you: Hey, when did you last feel despondent? You probably wouldn’t have an answer. We don’t often describe our feelings as ‘despondent’. I wasn’t even a hundred percent sure I knew what the word despondent meant.
It basically means to be unhappy and discouraged because you feel like you’re in a situation that won’t improve. And WOW have I been feeling despondent every time I spend more than ten minutes on Instagram.
I remember when the app used to cheer me up – happy life updates from friends, dance videos, random baby reels, travel vlogs, stand up comedy, makeup tutorials, recipes. All that content obviously still exists, but amidst multiple world crises, it’s buried under more important stuff. Important, yet distressing stuff.
I feel like every news cycle these days is more upsetting than the one before, and people are justifiably angry, and the whole thing seems bleak and gray. Despondent. Being on MY Instagram (since I know it’ll be different from yours) feels like a trek through a dystopian wasteland where joy goes to die. My feed has morphed into a battleground of societal outrage and existential dread.
The only thing that cheered me up online last week was seeing everyone’s pictures from when they were 21. The precious cute things that we do. I love that for us.
Despondency as a personality trait
‘The-world-sucks-climate-change-is-gonna-kill-us-all-we-live-in-hell-capitalism-will-be-the-end-of-us’
– Fellow millennials
These declarations sometimes feel like an intellectual flex on social media. The sadder you are, the smarter you probably are too. And as a sadboi myself, I don’t think these realizations are entirely off-base. Late-stage capitalism, wealth inequality, climate change, a volatile economy, and global health crises in the last year have been depressing.
It’s no wonder that people feel the way they do.
This sense of despondency might lead us to believe that “we’re all in this together” which is a helpful sentiment when you’re trying to organize and mobilize people to achieve something – boycotting, advocacy, awareness. Stuff like that.
But I also feel like it carries an assumption that to be hopeful or optimistic is somehow naive. It suggests that the only rational response to our world’s problems is one of resignation and despair. This perspective is not just annoying, but also counterproductive to the very things that could lead to change.
Despondency as a personality trait becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, where the expectation of failure excuses the absence of effort. Like, if the world sucks so bad then why even try?
“The people constantly saying that “we live in hell” are largely living comfortable lives. (I count myself among them.) That’s not to say that many people aren’t surviving hellish conditions today—say, factory workers, or war refugees, or poverty-stricken Americans navigating the slightest health crisis—but they’re not typically the ones claiming we live in hell. For those who are claiming it, that “we” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.”
– Do we “live in hell”? by Haley Nahman
And like Haley said, unlike the real hellish conditions that some people are facing in the world, most of the people claiming that we live in hell are talking about very different things – here are just last week’s tweets:
Back to my Instagram, it’s not the algorithm’s fault that things look so bleak on my feed. It’s not the world’s fault either. I’ve definitely had a hand in curating my own personal doom-scroll. The algorithm’s just giving me what I asked for.
I’ve poked my nose into too many dumpster fire comment sections. I’ve shown clear interest in content guaranteed to raise my blood pressure. All of that eventually contributed to me being fed more of what I seemed to be hungry for.
This shift from the frivolous internet of the mid-2010s to whatever it is we have going on today isn’t just about what’s out there in the world; it’s about who we’ve become in here (points to head). The more I engage, the more my digital echo chamber tailors itself to my headspace.
So did social media change because I did, or did I change because social media did?
Social media discourse is like junk food for the soul
(Please get the reference)
You know it’s bad for you, but it feels so good to indulge. There’s a certain painful pleasure in diving headfirst into the latest online discussion.
I tell myself that I’m just seeking to understand, to engage in healthy debate, to stay in touch with the world. But lately, I’ve been enjoying the moral high ground a little bit too much. Every time I engage, I’ve been enjoying that delicious sense of superiority that comes from knowing I am, without a doubt, on the Right Side of History™.
I’ve been feeling like a warrior of truth, battling against the tide of ignorance, one carefully crafted story at a time. There’s something undeniably gratifying about unleashing a well-crafted rant into the void.
And yet, it’s NOT the smug superiority that drives me. No, it’s a desperate yearning to actually make a difference, to right wrong perceptions one comment/post/story at a time. Because surely, if we can just enlighten enough people, we’ll inch closer to a better world, right?
I wrote about this in my essay World-Pain:
“Our very capacity to hold these contradictions — that things can be both better and worse, that progress can coexist with immense failure — makes our current world-pain all the more painful. It gives you a glimmer of hope, and then snatches it away.
It’s the existential bind of being aware yet ineffectual, of being a spectator to our own frustrations, and a bystander in a world where good intentions and high hopes collide with grim realities. This isn’t the plot twist we asked for, but it’s the one we’ve got. And so we talk, we feel, we think, we act – in a universe that is largely ambivalent to all of it.”
I’m Sisyphus with a smartphone, forever pushing a boulder of righteous anger up a hill, only to watch it roll back down with each new bad thing that happens. I’ve felt my perception of reality become so distorted that sometimes I couldn’t tell where my indignation ended and my identity began.
Why does being angry feel sooo gooood
Why do I willingly dive into this whirlpool of frustration, you ask? Can’t you just switch off?
It’s a peculiar kind of rush, this anger. Each time I stumble upon a lie masquerading as truth, a spark of honesty ignites within me, casting my own integrity in a brighter light.
When I see falsehoods or distortions online, my instinct to correct and clarify kicks in, which then fuels a sense of purpose and righteousness. When someone’s words drip with bias or hatred, my own kindness and empathy seem to shine all the brighter. The more the world outside seems to spiral into chaos, the more stable and virtuous my little island appears.
I’m not trying to save face here. That ship sailed a few paragraphs ago.
Most people that have read my blog, and followed my work over the last few months know how heavy the current issues in our world have weighed on my heart. And they continue to.
I’ve taken advocacy more seriously than I ever have before. I’ve done my best to learn, understand, and pay attention. I’ve been trying to be ‘a helper’ – a term coined by Mr. Rogers that I wrote about earlier this year. Helpers exist everywhere, and their role is most pronounced in their immediate surroundings.
But I’ve also been paying keen attention to what this ‘helping’ has done to me and my world view. How it has hardened my own stances. Made me more sensitive, more easily angered. And certainly, more aware of my own relative ‘goodness’ in a big, bad world.
In a world that often feels out of control, my anger gives me a semblance of power, a voice in the chaos. But is the price of feeling right/better worth the cost of seeing the world through a lens of perpetual hopelessness?
Like with any addictive substance, this high comes at a cost. The more you drink from the cup of moral outrage, the more the world outside begins to look like a dystopian hellscape. You start to see idiots lurking in every comment section. You meet people and wait for them to say something problematic. It becomes so easy to paint people with a broad brush when they disagree with you.
You find conspiracies woven into every news story. You find yourself questioning everything, believing nothing, and just growing weary. Eventually, you start to see the world as not just flawed, but fundamentally broken.
The cost of the high, for me, is the gnawing sense of powerlessness that follows right after. The world, viewed through the lens of post-rage clarity, appears even grayer, its flaws magnified, its beauty obscured by the remnants of yesterday’s battles. And that’s why I’ve been feeling despondent.
So just unplug already!
Yeah no.
I talked about advocacy, and I still believe it’s imperative that we talk, learn, organize, and advocate in whatever way we can. A part of that work exists online (not all of it, obviously). Which is why I’m not here to give you a holier-than-thou rant about the benefits of turning off, tuning out, and prioritizing your peace.
The world’s problems won’t dissolve into oblivion if we just pretend hard enough they don’t exist. But to continually view the world as irreversibly wrecked is no better than blind optimism. Those are both delusional stances.
It’s about recognizing this game for what it is. Our screens, our apps, those algorithms — they’re not benign tools. They’re powerful. And if we let them, they WILL shape our emotions, our beliefs, even our sense of self.
Right now, they’re selling us a particularly potent form of anger, packaging it as engagement, as being informed. As caring and empathy. And in that state, it’s so easy to mistake alarmism for activism.
Please hear me: I’m not saying we have no reason to be angry or upset at the state of the world. But we ought to be aware of what we’re being sold. Critical thinking and awareness are now more crucial than ever. We need to consistently do better at both those activities.
I’m just trying to choose my battles more wisely and not let every headline hijack my emotional wellbeing. I’m trying to find moments of levity amidst the gravity. Ultimately, the goal is not to escape the digital world but to inhabit it more wisely.
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