Social Media Detox

The Internet is designed to be addictive. Attention is a scarce good, everyone is chasing after yours to earn money. Worst of all, news has the habit of encouraging you to form opinions on things you have no influence over, which is a recipe for frustration.

There are things that leave me feeling better, then there are things that leave me feeling tired and frustrated. Going to the gym, reading books, meeting friends, that tends to leave me feeling happy and energetic. Refreshing the same four or five pages leaves me frustrated and tired. It’s seductive however, because I spend perhaps an hour a day on my job doing any sort of actual work. Even just doing my laundry would be superior over spending that free time getting tiny shots of dopamine.

Essentially, the pandemic is a cognitive trap for anyone with an IQ above room temperature. Western civilization decides to shoot itself in the foot and then the media shows you pictures of a bloody foot and says: “Look, the virus did this!” You’re then supposed to say: “How dare you act like a retard media, clearly the virus didn’t do this, we did this ourselves!” Meanwhile, you wasted another minute of your life that you’ll never get back.

The stock market is another cognitive trap. I’m not a daytrader, so I have no valid excuse to log in more than once a day to my account. I’m a value investor and my portfolio has gone up by 19,000 Euro in valuation since I began in March, there’s no point in obsessively following every move. If I log in once a day, it’s good enough.

I’ll use my computer to read some books (I can recommend reading The Decameron) and download movies, other than that I’m kind of done with social media for now. Reddit is going into BlockSite now, alone with ZeroHedge, Geenstijl and a load of other dumb sites that profit off anger and frustration. I’m making this post as a commitment and to avoid leaving you under the impression that I drowned in a ditch high on Datura or something along those lines.