Humming Man

Online Overwhelm, and Stepping Away from Social Media

I’m sitting in a library as I write this and a man sits beside me, looking at the newspaper in front of him. He is humming the words as he reads to himself, his heavy airy breath sighing out each half a word almost like he’s reciting some little piece of magic hidden in the news. Everyone else, it seems, is staring at a computer or their phone. But in the quiet accompanied by this man’s humming, there is something refreshing.

I couldn’t think for a while. Still can’t do it well. Not really. Slowly, it’s returning. The past month or so when I’ve gone to my notebook or my computer to write I just come up empty on what to say. All has already been said. Or, rather, too much is being said and not enough out in the world is really being done. At first I thought that it was just social media and the news, the cyclone of shit being thrown our direction by every outlet possible, combined with incendiary takes that read or view more as ranting gasps than they do actual thoughts. I was becoming consumed by all the overwhelm and wanted to just turn the screen off. As I’m sure a lot of us have, I just wanted to tune out, disappear from the noise. Not really hide from what’s going on, but see it at a safe distance. Be able to think about it, maybe understand why all this is happening better.

The other day I left my car to get smogged. The mechanic told me they had to fix a fuel hose and that it might take all day. By mid afternoon they said they got the wrong part, and so I had to pick it up tomorrow. I was without my car, didn’t have my headphones and had recently deleted all my social media and browsers from my phone, and was wandering around Berkeley, a near ten miles from my home.

I walked a mile or so to get a very mediocre lunch that was luckily filling. I hit up a friend to hang, and walked to their house and wandered the neighborhood. Slowly the day was starting to fade and it was time to head back home. The Ubers and Lyfts which I rarely ever take were too expensive since it was rush hour. So, I decided to just walk towards home until I grew tired.

The sun faded into a bright orange as I made my way up and then through downtown Berkeley. As the night took over and I walked through all the people going to and from work, classes, talking amongst themselves or speed walking while staring at their phones, I started to take notice of all the sounds. Water was falling in a now quiet building sight, echoing on clean concrete as cars sped by, people gossiped with friends, or just sighed as they stared at their phone, waiting for the lights to turn green.Slowly, I made my way to the border of Oakland, just watching everything moving and happening around me.

The world, like the news and social media rightly points out, is turning in a terrifying direction, and I can see it in Oakland, this fear for the world. I realized on that walk that, really, what I had been missing in all that online stress, was the world that was actually in front of me. Regardless of if that world, the one beyond the screen where I’m writing this, is doing well or not, that is my Terra Firma. Nothing else. And if there is anything to be done to help my world, it will be done there first.

As I thought about all this, free from my phone, my legs started to tire. I looked at the Uber prices and, finally, they were affordable. I got one and made it, finally, home.

It was serene to not have anything to stare at on that walk. I guess that’s something that I keep returning to in these newsletter, that I enjoy the world when I am more presently living in it, and not on some screen. I think a lot of us feel this way. Whenever I bring up issues around my phone use, most everyone I talk to seems to agree that they want to be on their phone less. There is a general longing for time away from media as it exists today. I notice it in the jokes I hear people make, the wishes people talk about. I even see it on my feeds when I check Instagram on my computer. It’s everywhere, in small cracks. A large amount of people just don’t want to be this plugged in all the time. They don’t want to be addicted to their phones, or beholden to these tech behemoths. And if these companies make their money off our attention, the less we give it to them, the more we strain their power.

We need space, especially amidst all the stress and terror of this world, especially if we want to have the energy to actually do anything about it. That’s why, turning away from your phone or social apps in general is not really tuning out, but rather a small resistance to the tech companies power while also leaving space for your own thinking, your own boredom—room for you to live your own life with your own trivial thoughts. I’m not talking about anything edgy really. I’m talking about thinking. It’s that simple.

I’m stepping, slowly but surely, further away from my phone. And with each step I feel my head, my self, coming back. I feel the world around me more as the thing that consumes me, like this man humming to himself in the library.

I hear the rifling of pages, the tapping of my keyboard, the ominous and undefined drone of something in the library and I feel that uncomfortable, sticky warmth in the room full of all the people in here, so strangely quiet, almost completely silent save me tapping, and this man’s humming breath. This is where I am.