I just deleted an Instagram account on which I'd been quite active for a couple years. In addition to the one for my musical concern, I have also one on which I follow dogs and other animals; the newly-obliterated one was for my photos by me. Through it, I had been following others' photography and visual art, as well as arcane subjects such as cryptids, and some select political accounts. The last genre got kinda hairy to engage with, and I'd end up having to block "people" who just wanted to argue – too often, to make me look bad or feel stupid (or vice-versa). Discussion could turn ad hominem at any moment. Otherwise, I found myself having to contend with people who failed to comprehend what I was saying, because they were accustomed to a different socio-linguistic register or couldn't see that something were beyond their experience or where they lacked information. It reinforced my impression of social media as a dinner party to which one invites select associates for the conversational chemistry – along with anyone from off the street, who bring with them their poor manners, lack of shared background, and total miscomprehension and inconsideration of the principally-invited guests and their viewpoints.
Then along came the situation of the past few months, and now, the more recent "events" (the latter of which took me far less time to recognize as a cynical contrivance on the part of the Man Behind the Curtain). Suddenly, photographers' and artists' accounts became political accounts, regurgitating the slogans and hashtags that the Office of the Man Behind the Curtain delivers to people's brains like RSS feeds, for all the dogs to bark just because it's what the other dogs are barking. So many people were "just having to respond" to "what was going on" and such – dogs barking because the others are – and then having to display a badge of having barked out of duty to peer pressure. Social media platforms have turned people from thinkers to reactors, detouring to the emotion-controlling lower brain thought processes which should be taking place in the upper brain, causing people to react out of fear, hostility, and libidinal survivalism, rather than to act out of leavened rationality, processed experience, and respect and empathy for others.
Now that people are saying, "If you don't think the way I do, then I don't want to know you," we definitely are devolving into a uncivil, undemocratic society; fascism is just around the corner. The way in which people are influenced by social media to comport themselves increasingly resembles demonic possession, which isn't surprising when one considers that the "platform" does induce a trance state and casts a spell by the usage of imagery and words. The smartphone is just a little TV in the palm of one's hand. The influence of a single TV set in the home was, for decades, bad enough, but the constant ubiquity and necessity of these devices – on one's person at all times – has totally commandeered people's consciousness by a constant open pipeline of demonic programming. But, of course, pay no attention to the Man Behind the Curtain.
I hated to delete that Instagram account. A lot of my passionate engagement with the world went into it – secondarily, the positive interactions I'd had based upon shared interests and perspectives, and primarily, the "content" that I'd kept shoveling onto that page. Getting out of the house, going on long walks (the other day, I covered at least 15 miles) and photographing stuff that I see – not art photography, just documentary image-capturing – has been so good for me. More people should be getting out of the house and interacting with their immediate surroundings and the real people in them. The more that "life" and "reality" come to consist of the stream of an RSS feed to one's lower brain, the more objectified and dehumanized people come to be to one other and to themselves. Arguments drawn from real life are useless against the RSS feed, lost in translation – akin to how, for example, there is no word in the Japanese language for "privacy." Although the light-stalking detracts from time which I "should" be devoting to music-making, I know that I am doing the right thing, at this point in my life, and in "history," by getting out-and-about with my camera as I have.