There are certain social media rules we can all agree on: Ghosting a conversation is impolite, and replying “k” to a text is the equivalent of a backhand slap (violent, wrong, and rude). But what about the rest of the rules? When can we really remind someone of our old Venmo request? What happens when someone tries to flirt with you on LinkedIn?
Fortunately, terminally online writers Delia Cai and Steffi Cao are here to answer all your digital quandaries, big or small. Welcome to Fast Company’s advice column, Posting Playbook. This week, Delia tackles your biggest questions about doomscrolling and tagging.
I’m unemployed and wasting a lot of my time scrolling on social media, but I feel too burnt out to be productive. What do I do?
Trust me, I know the feeling. The extremely smart designer and technologist Mindy Seu once told me that we shouldn’t think of scrolling on social media as a kind of personal moral failure: these platforms are literally designed to hold our attention. We’re like a bunch of CocoMelon babies held hostage, neurochemically speaking.
That said, you and I both are aware of how totally brainrotted all that scrolling can make us, and being unemployed and feeling generally robbed of agency is already a vulnerable state to be entering the internet casino, so to speak. It might sound counterintuitive, but it may help to designate a specific hour of the day—ideally not when you’ve just woken up or are about to go to sleep—for mindless scrolling. That will make the activity feel more like something you can look forward to and enjoy. Figure out what exact incentives you need to keep yourself off for the rest of the day, whether it’s relying on certain extensions, apps, or tools to “lock” yourself out, or simply deleting the app off your phone and relying only on desktop.
In the meantime, I’d encourage you to view the opposite of scrolling not as being productive per se, but absorbing actual input. The writer Caitlin Kunkel first introduced me to this model of what she calls input/output: You can’t be creative or productive without actively inputting new sources of inspiration and material into your system. What this means for our purposes is that I’d advise you to go into Input Mode: Take yourself to see at least one film a week that isn’t a blockbuster (bonus points if it’s subtitled) or on your TV. Look up gallery shows in your area and make yourself go look at art, even if it’s really terrible or illegible. Assign yourself a schedule of books to read (get recommendations from friends—those beat out random listicles every time), interesting events to attend, and museums or landmarks to visit.
The goal here is not to ingest a certain quota of “content” in lieu of the scrollable type, but to allow your brain to be exposed to different, IRL sensations while you’re taking a break from the nine-to-five. Go see old friends, or challenge yourself to get coffee with someone new. Your impulse to scroll is clearly indicative of your desire for sensory input. Go get it out in the world, and then observe how your mind starts firing up again. Then you’ll be ready for output mode.
My partner posts a lot of photos of me on his Instagram, but he doesn’t tag me! It drives me crazy, but I also feel really uncool asking him to do so. Is there a chill way to bring this up?
Yes! It’s best to be direct and calm about this kind of request. It’s no different than if you’re asking your partner to, say, take his shoes off before coming into your house. There are clearly different expectations of etiquette here, and if you make it clear to him that it means a lot to you to be tagged (whether practically, so that you can repost, or simply at an ego level, because you like feeling that acknowledgement), he should be understanding of your needs. Your partner may have his own reasons—maybe he thinks you’d be annoyed by the tag, or maybe he just doesn’t want to take spend more time on Instagram. Talk it over without feeling apologetic about how “uncool” it is to worry about IG. Everyone does it!
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