With phone in hand, I am a dog chasing his own tail. A rabid incarnation of consumerism, pulled this way and that by the whims of billionaire-men who want my attention. An ever-folding web of needs that build across the next thing and the next thing and the next…
…I think I might be the problem here.
Recently I’ve been thinking that the same fizzy, free-associating mind state I have when scrolling through social media is one that is similar to one I have at work, and it can be super beneficial, too. How ironic then that one can take from the other.
Let’s take last Thursday as an example. I woke up full of intention, tenacious about the day – what I could offer it, and indeed it offer me. When things are going exceedingly well, I tend to get an hour into the day before I start to feel the call of the digital siren.
Yes, a whole hour phone-free.
Because I had carefully hidden my phone the night before, so that I can better be apart from the device as I go about my morning, and it’s usually around this time that I start to think that perhaps today I shall finally be free of its distractions. An ADHD diagnosis a few years ago has led to all sorts of clever coping strategies – this is just one of them.
But of course, this is never the way it plays out. Usually faced with some innocuous reason to pick up my mobile – something along the lines of sending a message or checking the weather – suddenly I am thrown into a totally different headspace, one driven by a small, uninspected tugging at the centre of me, looking for something.
I start with the news – BBC usually. That feels in some way ‘proper’, as if that is what I should be looking at to get my fix of dopamine. After all, isn’t that what my father did? And the generation before him? Perhaps someone meaningful to me has passed away in the night, perhaps something terrible has happened in the world. Do I read it because I care or do I read it because it gives me some small hit of adrenaline? I am aghast to admit the latter, but by the looks of where I go next it would seem this is just the first stop in a tour of dopaminergic destinations dazzled into my downturned face.
Next, more news sites. Some that are politically aligned with me and crucially, some that aren’t. The juxtaposition between the two extremes is usually enough to get my brain pumping in cortisol now. Look at the state of the world! Look how divided we are – how will we ever see eye to eye again? I begin to have fantasy conversations as I read, arguing with some staunch, dumb-headed tabloid reader who exists only in my mind.
Now I am primed and ready to turn my attention to algorithmic ‘social media’ feeds.
I have long since logged out and deleted the social media apps that took up the majority of my online hours – Instagram first, and then later TikTok. This was back in the days when social media was something I consumed into the early hours of the morning. I would lie awake, sweaty and stressed, a gnawing fear slowly rising in my chest that perhaps the next clip would soothe. Okay maybe the next one. Okay the one after this one.
These days I reach for the feeds you don’t need to log in to. YouTube Shorts and Facebook Reels will serve you up chaotic slop from your phone’s browser, no problem. And does Reddit even count? I am learning on Reddit, surely?
And it’s all got an angle. It’s all doing something to me. Whether it’s making me sad, or making me laugh, or asking me to consider a new bum bag, it’s got an agenda. And my busy brain will swallow all of those agendas and ask for more.
And in some ways I’ve been like this for years now. This way of thinking has been bleeding into my senses, little by little, despite my best efforts to resist it. I have begun to speak to myself in strange new monologues, as if I am vlogging my current experiences. I am talking to myself as if I am creating content, despite no cameras facing me.
And honestly it’s fucking exhausting. Who am I really comparing myself to and why? Can’t I see how blessed I am to have what I have?
But I’ll tell you where this type of thinking is much less exhausting, and that’s on set.
On set, the free-associating, fast-paced brain that is at the mercy of an algorithm now becomes a master of its surroundings.
As I walk into the interview space, I can sense exactly the type of morning the location contact is having and work out how much to tell her in the next two minutes and how much to reserve until after she has had another coffee. I can see by the layout and loadout of the camera operators roughly how long they will need to be ready, and I am confirming with them where the best light will be coming from in an hour. I am aware of the contributor’s nervousness and make a mental note to speak together outside of this room while work goes on regarding what we need to discuss on camera – I have seen they like to be prepared from our pre-production calls together and I want to head off anything too polished. It’s also too warm in here, and the lack of a thermostat plus the contributor’s choice of jumper means that I will need to make sure we have something cool for them to drink and perhaps even discuss an outfit change. This is all taking place in the thirty seconds I am getting together my clients to check over the changes that we will need to be making to this afternoon’s schedule, because I overheard that one of the team members who was meant to be here for the meeting is unwell, and they are crucial to our storyboards.
But when sat in front of a glowing oblong of nefarious algorithmic attention-grabbing content, that same ability to hold many things in my mind at once can be a way of ensuring a psychological spiral before my Shreddies.