Notes on Not Posting

intermittent fasting for the terminally online

I went quiet on social media for two months. I told myself it was an experiment in taking back my time, but it was motivated by a number of things. Among these, a growing existential boredom with performing myself, the persona, and with the endless discourse cycles. Media is increasingly about media and the recursion got exhausting. It was probably something of a weak rebellion too, not just against the platforms we love to hate, but against your expectation. There’s some self-respect in not being so predictable.

Taking a break from social media is the new going natural, going to therapy, going on vacation. You secretly hope the distance will teach you something. You also just want to prove that you can.

I noted down some observations from sabbatical. (I should clarify: I didn’t post - no tweets or notes - but I didn’t delete the apps or swear off visiting them entirely.) I suspect I’ll know why I wrote this once it’s done, or maybe I won’t.

1. Consumption alone is a weak drug. Posting is what keeps me sucked in. When I’m not posting, it’s far easier for me to drift away for days, even weeks at a time.

2. I feel simultaneously more invisible and more mysterious. Fewer people are watching. Fewer people can pin down exactly what I’m doing right now. Not posting has the air of reclaiming privacy.

3. I miss the validation but not the encore anxiety. Posting bangers is fun, but the pressure to keep posting bangers is not.

4. I’m less consumed by technology twitter themes and more in tune with the rest of the world. I feel less neurotically knowledgeable about the “discourse” but more grounded in my own convictions.

5. I've been consuming less of the media that's discussed on social media too. It's less interesting without complementary discourse. Commentary is half the product, confirmed.

6. I feel more free. There’s one less place I’m accountable for showing up and playing mostly nice.

7. You realize how much of your personality is reactive to a feeds instead of rooted in your own characters and story. Past a point, posting is more identity construction than expression.

8. Boredom asserts itself more, and more pleasantly. You’re reminded that silence has its own texture. There’s more time to think about what you actually want, not what plays well.

9. You stop thinking in posts. Thoughts return to conversation.

10. Irritability and envy go down. The feed is a ragebait firehose and a comparison machine. You always knew this, but you forgot.

11. Hot take anxiety disappears. There’s no pressure to jump into the discourse “early” or before some arbitrary window closes. The urgency was fake and the thing didn’t matter much either.

12. I have more creative energy. Turns out even posting off-the-cuff thoughts in your free time empties the reserve. A good rule of thumb: don’t post before you finish your creative hours.

13. I crave achievement from making heavier things. Tweets and notes don’t satisfy but they give you dopamine. Without that, you’re even hungrier.

14. I wrote a lot — and in genres I’m mostly not known for. But I didn’t publish most of it. Something will come of it this year.

15. There's space to plan things you're not ready to talk about.

16. You find out who wants to talk to you and who just wants you to entertain them. True friends text you, the others just wait.

17. I miss the sociointellectual collisions. Not all of them were meaningful, but they were plentiful. That part I miss.

18. There’s a distinction between your long-term reputation and what you’ve posted lately. The feed runs on recency but reputation is built over long stretches of time. When you’re not posting, you see your own value breakdown more cleanly.

19. Earnest nonchalance goes up. You can see the game more clearly. Everyone making this place feel like the center of the universe has an incentive — it’s what they can wield, where their reputation carries, and they’re committed so they need buddies.

20. The slop quotient has gone up. I see more AI, more bait, and content that exists to exist. There’s an essay contest on X for $1M, and it’s still mostly slop. The feed is getting worse and most people inside it can’t tell.

21. Social media is a surveillance tool. Some people keep tabs on you through your posts. When you stop posting, they notice. You can usually identify their emotions: anxious, annoyed, worried.

22. Without the micro-dopamine, real-world pleasures register more.

23. Fiction hits harder. I immersed myself in more of what I’d consider true art. More imagination, timeless principles, and character study.

24. I care less what people think of me.

25. I make more phone calls.

26. It‘s all status games at some level. Posting, not posting — both are moves.

27. I almost posted a few times. But there’s an inertia to returning — what’s worth re-entering with? Especially when you have a following. You have to answer for where you were.

28. I still love media. It’s the center of the universe and of our individual worlds. But the war wages on between good media and bad media. Reading, writing, real conversation, and movies win.

29. You learn the internet doesn’t need you. It’s good to be reminded of that once in a while. The lesson scales to life itself. The world moves with or without you. Do what you will.

At the end of the intermittent fast, there's always a decision: return or not? Usually I tell myself I'll return but post less, keep my center better this time. But there's no in-between for a poster - you're either all-in or all-out. The only half-measure that might work is reserving posts for announcements and heavier work, not ad-hoc brain dumps. The irony is those are the bangers.

There should be an extreme decision at the end of this, but there isn’t. If I like a little mystery and unpredictability, it’d be unwise for me to share it even if there were.

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Cover photo: Cindy Sherman