Anti-Social Media Social Club: What's Next?

Attention is one of the last things we can control; Groove members shared some thoughts on how to do it

Anti-Social Media Social Club: What's Next?
One solution should be to bring back physical newsstands, tbh. (Via EdenPictures on Flickr)

Happy Monday Groven,

It’s been a whole two weeks since the inauguration and lots of things are happening. I’m not sure about you, but it’s felt like much longer. The deluge of information, changes, and constitutional breaches has fractured my sense of time a little, you know? You know. I got into the idea of attention economics recently and conceiving of attention as a currency to be spent. I’m also, at the same time, a yapper and a poster and an early adopter, so you can understand that social media is A Problem for me. I’ve had Twitter since 2008 and finally deleted it last week. It was sad! 

Recently, Virginia wrote to you about The Problem of social media. The broligarchy and their apps (and the word "broligarchy" itself) are everywhere, an overarching icky presence that affects so many aspects of our lives. Ken Klippenstein coined the phrase "the Appistocracy" in reference to how much control these apps have  and how it feels mandatory to use them to participate in modern society. We use them for everything: how we collect information, keep up with events, follow the news and so much more.

The problem is of course that what we used to rely on has been gutted by the Appistocracy itself. So Virginia asked you: what are you doing about it? Some of you are scaling back, some are quitting entirely, and some are holding on for very specific reasons (like snooping on exes or searching for snacks, which, valid!). 

Here’s what the Groven had to say about leaving — or not leaving — the digital world, broken down into categories.