I've been having what I would describe as my seasonal mood swing. In Cleveland that was full-on seasonal affective disorder, but here, being on bupropion, it's more of an intermittent meh. I would characterize it as a lack of motivation and desire to hibernate. Having a couple of rainy weeks, and some other tough stuff, didn't help. What I find interesting though is that, following my social media detox, I totally get why it's so easy to doomscroll. It requires almost no effort at all. I found myself wanting to do it whilst lying around unmotivated. Now, fortunately, I see some cat videos on Instagram, the last surviving app on my phone, and then I'm bored. For me at least, social media is now more boring than doing nothing.
It's pretty well documented, the algorithmic manipulation that turned social media into rage-baiting infinite-scrolling. As I've said for years, there's no connection with friends anymore. That paradigm is dead. (Well, aside from TogetherLoop.) The engagement machine is, in some ways, a brilliant business model. You don't have to generate any content yourself, your consumers expend almost nothing to consume it, the consumers react emotionally, even if negatively, and it never ends.
For me, I think the thing that snapped me out of this unhealthy routine, aside from the FB bounce, was the realization that I was putting energy into people and things that I had no real connection with. Sure, lolcats are funny and give me a little smile on Instagram, but you can't avoid the onslaught of ads, the political stuff and a lot of suffering. It's not that you shouldn't pay attention to that sort of thing, but being informed by professional journalists is not the same as doomscrolling. Doing it for leisure seems fine, and grownups can be responsible, but the zero friction and ease makes it easy to overlook what's going on.
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