crEATe

for godsake.

it has been 3 months since instagram launched the feature of watching reels on 2x speed. let’s be honest, what is this feature REALLY doing? how is it helping us? IS it even helping us? we know all the answers, we just don’t really think about it, discuss it, or address it.

with each passing day, social media is only becoming more of a shackle. we’ve knowingly bound ourselves to it, and consciously given the keys to some random billionaire or something, idk. the point is, we’ve dropped the keys to our creativity, our ability to think, and our intelligence in someone else’s pocket, and we cannot blame anyone but ourselves. don’t get me wrong, social media is very helpful, indeed. it is a source of livelihood for so many of us humans, it’s informative no doubt, it’s entertaining, and you can learn so much through social media. but don’t you think we’ve lost a bit of ourselves in the process? [well, it doesn’t matter if you don’t think so, cause i do. this is my substack and imma write about how we have rotted our brains with ts]

i cannot help but notice in local trains, in metros, at bus stops and rickshaw stands how we are glued to the screens all the damn time. oh my bus is late? let me scroll reels meanwhile. oh the train is so damn crowded i can’t even stand properly, imma still scroll reels cause what else can i do? the metro train is so damn empty today, but ofcourse i will still doomscroll. i even see aunties and uncles the age of our parents, maybe older, maybe younger, addicted to reels and shorts all the same. i mean imagine how powerful that thing is, that it has our parents hooked to it? the parents who would scold us for being on our phones all day, the ones who grew up with the literal dabba phones are now EQUALLY glued to their phones and social media? it is lowkey disappointing.

the og phones

i don’t know about you, but since the “watching reels on 2x speed” feature has launched, my attention span has gone damn lower. i mean, i feel like im dragging a huge rock with a rope if im watching reels at the normal speed now. and mind you, that is no thing to flex.

my drawing and handwriting :P

we have become slaves to whatever this thing is. i don’t even know who to blame. the apps? it’s intangible how do i even tell it that it is such a rotting piece of shit. the government? nah. the creators? they are trying to earn their share of food, can’t blame them. who’s left? ah, the damn consumers.

i am a victim of all this doomscrolling too. you will probably unfriend me if you see my screen time. it is unhealthy. really. latelyi’ve been consoling myself saying it’s alright, considering i wasn’t using social media for the last 6 months, but whatever.

people no longer talk to each other. going for a walk? taking the phone with them. quick run to the vegetable vendor below? phone comes along. the problem isn’t carrying your phone everywhere, but acting like it’s the only thing that you have with yourself. there are a million other things to do. the one topping this list of things to do is taking a goddamn social media break. admit it or not, it is exhausting and we’ve all been there. comparing and cribbing with where’s everyone travelling, living, thriving, then pitying yourself for not being as pretty or rich or cool as them, missing out on stuff everyone is doing, it is all exhausting. you start doing things just for show, for likes. we start becoming performative in whatever we do, knowingly or unknowingly, whether we like it or not.

social media, ai, and everything else even remotely associated with these has made us into this ever hungry consumer of such a form of media that no longer assists in our development but rather obstructs it.

i saw a reel today (see, i doomscroll too, okay?) in which the creator said that in the next 20 years or so we will probably forget how we actually look because we will have used ai so much to make us look a specific way in our pictures we will have forgotten our real faces. and my dumbass accidentally refreshed the page and i couldn’t watch the whole reel but it is scary. we photoshop ourselves into places we were never in, talk to bots that aren’t living, consume media which was never meant to be created in the first place. but i am not here to talk about how ai is going to take over us [which it definitely will, y’all can quote me in the future later] but about how we should take over ourselves and control what we consume before stuff gets too real.

we need to talk to people in real life. go to libraries. get back hardcopy dictionaries and encyclopedias, write letters, read books, indulge in long form content, and be human. everything doesn’t need a shortcut, an easier way, a quicker way. take the long route if the path teaches you something, even if it takes more time. it doesn’t make you any less of a human, but finding shortcuts does. stop consuming brainrot. take a break from social media. have your own thoughts, own personality, own identity and not of some random influencer whom you worship. we have literally stopped having original thoughts. we cannot think on our own. we read comments on posts and then go repeat those lines to a friend. maybe you do believe in whatever the comment said, but was that thought born out of your thinking process? did you actually sit down for a decent amount of time and think about the movie you just watched? the characters? the takeaways? the philosophical meaning it does or does not hold? no you didn’t. and it is very uncool of you to borrow other people’s opinions and advocate them as your own because those weren’t your original thoughts bro.

emphasizing yet again: stop consuming. start creating.

“oh but if everyone is creating, who will consume what we create?” very valid question jessica, and quite bold of you to assume everyone is going to be creating after reading this rant a random girl wrote on her google doc on a thursday night.

to sum it up, everything lies in the choices we make.

you want to create? have thoughts of your own? be human? excellent.

you want to consume? become obsolete? lose yourself in the process? also excellent.