i am tired of letting the algorithm decide what i want to see. the modern world feels like it took over control of me. I am no more in control of things. running on autopilot, big corps who are behind these social medias are dictating what i want to see. i don’t think the algorithm learns from me and shows me more of what i want to see. I think the algorithm slowly brainwashes me into seeing what it wants me to see. and how can someone even argue with the fact that algorithm is showing me what i want to see when it just shows me the most viral content. You will rarely see a video with 4 - 10 likes, all these videos on my feed are viral. what about the real gems that gets only 5 -10 likes but they are made with a purpose, a taste. How can i ever explore those.

my biggest problem with algorithm is that it slowly turns you into this view counter machine, you lose the actual reason you started making art and start chasing vanity metrics. for some people, they want to just enjoy their craft and document their life online, so they can look back but the moment you make something a bit better than average, people criticize you for not pushing it online. why just post it and not do any marketing. people will not see and it will disappear blah blah blah… but what if don’t want to. what if i just want to post it for the sake of posting it. what if i want to document my life for the sake of documenting my life and not make an audience for it.

all of these views goes very much against the business that i am running. it relies on exposure, reach and audience. if people don’t see my business, it will stop producing money and i will go broke. but that is my business, that is a part of me - not ME. this is me, my business just shows what i do or offer in my professional sense, but for my life, i want it to be algorithm free. i don’t want to be constantly bombarded with the stupid 30 second crap someone made just to get views on it. they are not creating art, they are engineering a drug. the sudden rise of creators on social media is not because of the fact that everyone suddenly wants to express themselves or they love to create content, they see the monetary benefits, they see freedom and profit. and that’s the reason why you have so much brain rot brain dead content spread across the internet, because their job is to get your attention and monetize it.

i tried a lot of things like ditching social media altogether, deleting all of my social accounts. while it works, i don’t think that is the right way to approach the problem. the problem with going completely dark is you might miss out on stuff and i m not talking about FOMO. getting new clients and leads for my business totally relies on social media so if i not active there, i will miss a big chunk of leads that i can get, and yes you can argue that i can hire a social media manager and a team for me but that’s not sustainable for a company of my size, i am still in the early phases of building my company so i can’t afford to pay for something that i can do on my own. And matter of fact, i need social media because all the other side gigs i do rely heavily on it.

and i believe totally running away from the monster is not the viable solution when you know you need to co-exist with it in the society, so what do we do. we learn how to tame it, master it instead of running from it. and that’s exactly where awareness comes in.

awareness of your usage patterns, awareness of your consumption, awareness of your time. these are the little things that i am trying to work on. for now i am on a complete social media shut off but i will eventually come back to it but when i come back this time, i don’t want to mindlessly consume reels like a zombie, i want to be aware of what i watch. that awareness will help me filter out the garbage and not fill my mind with cheap dopamine. and most importantly, this time i will come on social media not to consume but to create.