Are social media and junk food a significant part of your life? If so, could you give them up? From Charles Hugh Smith at oftwominds.com:
We’re prone to addiction, and addiction is highly profitable. They know it, and we know it.
We inhabit an Addiction Economy. We all know the cure for addiction is to go Cold Turkey: drop the denial and delusion of control, and excise the source of the addiction from one’s life.
This is of course not easy; it’s agony on multiple fronts, for we’ve come to depend on the source of addiction for dopamine hits, pain management, and distraction from our troubles and travails.
Sources of addiction that tie into our identity and need to be recognized and valued are especially pernicious, as these are what make us feel that we exist in a meaningful way.
We’re talking of course about social media as the source of our most compelling and tenacious addiction, for social media is the means by which we say “I exist, my opinion matters, I matter, and here is the tangible evidence, everyone can see my selfie, photo, tweet, post, note or comment, and since everyone has a device to access my opinion, I can imagine multitudes seeing it, for I can see it.”
In a physical world where we’re invisible and don’t matter, the universal, tangible visibility of social media is addictive, for there is no substitute for it in the real world in which we’re anonymous and invisible. Try getting your photo or opinion in the Mainstream Media, on network TV or in a mass media publication. Unlike these rigorously gated forms of media, social media is open to all, an irresistible opportunity to stake a claim to becoming visible.
