The Trend Cycle Isn't The Problem

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I downloaded AOL when I was nine years old. I won’t rehash the absolute child endangerment of the internet in those days, but everyone my age and older remembers the insane sound of dialup, a family member picking up the phone and kicking us offline, trying to call your friend’s house and hearing screeching on the other end, and downloading a complete panel of viruses in order to hear the music we wanted. Early internet was a beautiful thing. Rest in peace to the PCs who endured our Trojan Virus ignorance.

I consider myself really lucky that I knew life before the internet. It’s not nostalgia for a simpler time — adolescence wasn’t fun for me — it’s the awareness that all of this, *gestures broadly*, all of this is optional.

I was listening to a great episode of Pete Holmes’ podcast with Alex recently on a long car ride a few weeks ago where he had Maya Hawke as his guest. Say what you want about nepo babies in Hollywood, the girl is cool, smart, and a great actor. Right at the end of the episode she says, “it's funny. Everyone's like, ‘Social media is the worst,’ Delete it. What if we just didn't use it? I don't know. Like, whoa,” imitating how silly it is that it feels far fetched to suggest deleting your social media.

Then she has a long stream of thought (I’ve cut out the conversational filler like repeated words and the word “like” here and there for intelligibility in text):

“I just think that we should be people. I don’t understand why why we’re seeding our intelligence to these machines. Like, black and white your phone, call your friends. Like, oh, social media is making you miserable, delete your account. And if it’s making you money and that’s how you feed yourself and live your life, set yourself work hours like an office. Let’s invest in each other and in people and start the human revolution and stop using — there are billboards all over San Francisco that say, ‘stop hiring humans,’ like it’s apocalyptic, and I just want to start the human revolution.”

Sure, it’s easy to dismiss that as a sheltered worldview born of extreme privilege, but I agree; I don’t think we realize how much power we hold.

Today in yoga, I gave out my number to a friend who wanted to ask me questions about makeup. I said, “You can text me. I don’t have Instagram.” Another friend said, “HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE?” The answer is it just is. It costs me money because Instagram stories are a great way to drive sales for brands. But the cost to rent space in my brain is higher than that. It just is.

This conversation came about (the conversation with myself I should say; I have a lot of those) because I was listening to a video by Katie Robinson on YouTube talking about the rise in natural fibers trending on TikTok and the broad sentiment of late surrounding polyester and synthetic materials in general. Essentially, the same girls who were doing Shein and ALO hauls for the last three years are now trying to sell you matching linen sets made in China instead of matching polyester sets made in China. Nothing against China, I’m just saying there’s no real difference in the influencers’ motivation there. They’re just riding a trend.

Then it seems intuitively that we, the collective, are faced with the task of disambiguating the validity of these assertions. Is polyester bad? Is linen good? Is throwing out all your polyester bad? Is buying more of anything bad? Is perhaps that the answer is what the answer always is…it depends?

The most consistent sentiment I see when I decide to wade into the waters of the non-subscription feed on this very platform is the absolute exhaustion at The Discourse™️.

One post laments the finger-up-its-own-ass-ness of asserting that Phoebe Bridgers’ no-phones policy is ableist. Another cites the “-ification” of anything as the laziest hot take of all. The fact is the data is always right there. Open YouTube and you’ll see people talking about TikTok. Open TikTok and you’ll see a bunch of people talking about the same thing. It’s not hard to observe what trends are flowing out and from whence they flow and who benefits from their constant churn. I’m not claiming to be immune to the appeal of a good “what are the clowns up to today?” chat on YouTube, (after all, I couldn’t accept those terms of service when the government bought it so I deleted the damn thing off my phone. I’m still in awe people stayed), but the core problem is this:

We feel we must say something, even when we have nothing to say, because the alternative would be to do something other than look at our phones.

That’s why The Discourse™️ exists; it’s folks commenting on people reacting to something someone said or did that bugged them on the internet because they have decided that the internet is the world. The internet is not real life, but if you choose to fill your waking hours with it, it is…your life. The trend cycles aren’t the problem; the fact that we live in constant awareness of them is. The news cycle isn’t the problem; the fact that we feel obligated to be miserable so we go looking for a reliable source of misery is. Our existential dread isn’t the problem; the fact that we’ve outsourced everything that makes us human into machines that promise to do it for us is. Our overconsumption isn’t the problem; the fact that we look to our phones for dopamine is.

The addictive nature of the internet isn’t the problem.

It is the fact that we think it isn’t optional — that’s the problem.¹

I think it’s really daunting to think about leaving the internet. Most of us don’t make our money here. In fact most of us spend a lot of our money here. And I guess what I’m saying is it’s not all or nothing; we’ve just lost our sense of agency.

“Chronically online” is a term much like “brainrot” that makes me extremely uncomfortable. I know that’s very millennial of me to say — I’m clearly not in on the self-deprecating joke — but I truly hate watching the majority of human beings self-identify as helpless to the lure of the internet. Much like an anglerfish (I love the deep sea so much, those are my little freaks), we are attracted to the promise of something that will make us feel good, make us feel anything. And much like an anglerfish we are then its next meal.

We are so much better than this.

My advice to untangle this sticky web is to interrogate the things that agitate your nervous system as they come up. This takes practice, but I promise it’s a phenomenal skill to hone.

Let’s say for example, you feel unattractive lately. You feel shame for not being able to keep up with the beauty standard, you can’t afford all the treatments you know would make you look younger, your body isn’t how you want it to be, what have you. Then you leap to, “Well, the beauty standard cooked my brain. If it weren’t for all these influencers making it look like this was so easy…” Right there. Interrogate that. Because guess where the beauty standard lives? In your phone. Sure, there’s “pretty privilege” and all that, but how would you move through the world if you weren’t comparing yourself to something unattainable out of some strange allegiance to the status quo?

Good news, it’s optional.

It’s not the influencers’ fault, and blaming them doesn’t accomplish anything anyway. The only reason they exist is because you exist. All of this used to not exist. You can just decide it doesn’t exist for you.

Think of all the things that you don’t even know exist. That’s a hilarious thing to suggest, but here are some things I know:

I know there are incels on 8chan saying unspeakable things about women that would scar me for life.

I know there are tons of people writing very good (and very bad) fanfiction and tons of people who read it.

I know there are like a zillion people who are obsessed with Taylor Swift, a ton who think she’s secretly gay, and a lot who hate her.

I know there are people who know everything a person could possibly know about their chosen professional football team.

But I don’t actually know about any of those things. Known unknowns. And I feel nothing about that. Think about all the things that someone might bring up to you that you simply do not care about, sit in that feeling, and let it free you. You can decide that’s how you feel about anything, if you so please. That’s free will, baby.

It wasn’t long in the corporate world before I looked around at all the weird ways people wanted me to curry favor with my superiors, make a show of my strong sense of initiative and be a team player to build equity for future promotions and raises — and realized, when I leave here, none of that matters. Even if I get fired for flipping my 36 year old boss’s desk and telling him straight to his face he’s a predator who fired every woman in his department who didn’t respond positively to him hitting on them until the 23 year old intern finally caved against the power imbalance and dated him (Ryan Hartman of Austin, Texas²), the news was unlikely to follow me to my next job. Besides, he deserves it.

Regardless, it’s easy to get sucked into worlds where people tell you what matters and to take those things seriously. A job, a message board, a group chat, a piece of content, it’s only as important as you let it be to you. If we actually took inventory, the internet is disproportionately positioned to weaken you, not strengthen you. It’s basically a consensual form of brainwashing, and we’re not even getting paid. If you find yourself scrolling TikTok, suddenly caring deeply about an issue you just found out about, stop, take a breath, and ask yourself if your brain space’s rent is high enough.

I say this all the time but the beauty of aging out of the microscope of relevance is that you stop caring about most things. Caring about anything is optional. Consider raising the rent on who and what has access to that space.

1. That’s a haiku, aw.

2. I didn’t do this. I wish I had.