drinking the poison and calling it water

I don't mind if this is your first impression of me. 

(I'm also considering this as a continuation to my podcast episode about consuming content: Are You Not Entertained?)

--

Whenever the creeping dread sets in about how much time we spend staring at our glowing rectangles, we probably (immediately) hold up the pure, utilitarian functions as our shield.

“But how else would I call my mom?”
“It’s how I stay in touch with m long distant friends.”

We use the undeniable benefit of digital communication and social media to justify the hours lost to the infinite scroll.

But girl, let’s be brutally honest: the tool has become a toxin.

Social media is poison and I am willingly consuming it. 

It is a slow-drip IV disguised as a lifeline, and the most dangerous part isn't the toxicity itself - it's our collective, stubborn insistence that we are immune to it.

Ask anyone, and they’ll tell you they have it under control, that they aren't the ones getting brainwashed or how they just use it for the memes, or the news, or the group chats. We walk around insisting that we are perfectly fine, completely oblivious to the deterioration of our mental capacity.

But we aren't fine. 

Our attention spans are fracturing. The ability to sit in silence, to engage in deep, uninterrupted thought, is actively eroding. This could just be a me-thing but I can't help but notice that we are no longer reaching for the profound depths of our own minds or the messy, beautiful reality of each other’s existence. Instead, we may be (voluntarily) surrendering to a hollow, algorithmic numbing - trading the terrifying beauty of being fully alive for a cheap and endless distraction. 

AND GUESS WHAT

The cruelest irony of an ecosystem built entirely around the promise of "connection" is that it is actively making us horrible friends!

We confuse viewing/liking a 15-second Story/a post with actual presence. 

We think that because we know what someone had for lunch, or where they went on vacation, we actually know how they are doing. 

We don’t. 

We are losing the texture of real human connection, replacing the necessary reality of showing up for people with double-taps and sharing endless Reels. We judge each other through the lens of curated feeds, assuming the worst/best or comparing ourselves to the impossible. 

We are more "connected" than ever, yet we are entirely absent.

I’m lucky to have real connection in my life, people I can actually see, talk to, and share meaningful moments with every day. But something about modern friendships has been bothering me lately. 

Sometimes it feels like the relationship becomes reduced to tiny gestures, like replying to a message suddenly counts as maintaining the friendship itself, as if occasional access to each other is enough to replace genuine presence, care, or effort.

And I know people would probably respond by talking about boundaries, emotional capacity, protecting your peace, all of that. 

Of course boundaries matter. 

But I can’t help feeling like the language of boundaries is sometimes used to justify emotional distance or disengagement. Somewhere along the way, it feels like we started treating connection as optional maintenance rather than something we actively nurture.

There’s this mindset of, “Well, I’m doing okay, so everything’s okay,” and maybe that works on an individual level, but it can also feel deeply self-centered. 

Like we’ve become so focused on preserving ourselves that we’ve forgotten what it means to truly show up for one another and be active in the community. 

I could be wrong, but sometimes it feels less like healthy independence and more of indifference.

The internet is so overwhelming lately that I feel like most of us are getting way too dangerously gullible, swallowing content whole without thinking. I also hate how much power we give to certain celebrities/influencers, letting their fake, polished lives shape exactly how we view the world, lazily not forming our own opinions.

We believe the manufactured outrage, absorb the out-of-context news clippings. We look at a fabricated, highly edited version of reality and accept it as fact.

The first step to fixing a deteriorating system is admitting the diagnosis: this is poison and we are calling it water. 

So, the next time we catch ourselves trying to justify the hours of brain-rot by claiming that we just want to 'stay connected' with long-distance friends, or whatever bluff we tell ourselves, a quick text to your friends/family is water. 

The infinite, mindless scroll is poison and we have to stop pretending we don't know the difference.

My biggest hope is that reading this flips a switch in your brain, or at least cracks the glass. 

I hope you never look at your screen the exact same way again, and that the next time you start mindless scrolling, you finally see it for what it is, and I don't know, let's hang out???

[Slowly taking away your phone],

PLAYLIST: 

Gone by Mr. Probz ft. Anderson Paak

Bombs Over Baghdad by Outkast

All Falls Down by Kanye West 

Farrah Fawcett Hair by Capital Cities ft. Andre 3000

Beach Boy by Amine