Day One Of No Scrolling: The Results So Far

Yesterday, I wrote about a strong urge to stop scrolling.

Today was day one of the experiment, and the results were downright astonishing.

Got up this morning, and did not look at X, Facebook, or even this Substack, at all, not once. Nor was I tempted.

I knew somehow that I was about to get my mind back, but I didn't dare believe it. “Scrolling” is not “mindless;” It viciously, insidiously de-patterns the mind, and is, I now think, the primary driver of ADHD, PTSD, OCD, disassociation, de-realization, depression and all the rest.

With a big editing project at hand, due imminently, and an unexpected mold crisis I will relay another time, I was in dire, urgent need of reclaiming my mind.

So this is what happened: I opened my laptop, and worked for 10 hours straight, with one short lunch break. No confusion, brainfog, anxiety, no “freeze,” no disassociation.

Just from one single morning of social media abstinence.

I felt like a freed prisoner. It worked that fast.

We need to go back to doing “nothing,” giving our minds a rest. (Even though it’s un-American.) Don’t even fold socks, or “multi-task” while on the phone—just allow your mind to do one thing at a time, (talk to a friend, for instance) and watch how anxiety dissolves.

We’re producing and consuming way, way too much “information,” with no agency, no choice, crashing down on our minds, which were designed to think about things actually before us. Around us. In depth, in continuity—not in random, de-contextualized shards, always splintering, always ominous.

Friends actually send each other video clips, just video clips they want them to agree with.

We’re becoming post-communicational—people used to speak. I too had almost entirely stopped reaching out to friends. It was not because I had stopped caring, it was because my mind was uncontactable even to myself; I had no “bandwidth.” (I do know I am not a computer. But Yuval Harari says we’re “hackable animals.”)

I was truly afraid they had really done it—that I had become smart dust. Or that it had gotten into my brain somehow, this alien nano-dust they all talk about.

Day before yesterday, this was my only memory—something that happened that day that I remembered:

So I wasn’t going crazy.

I was simply, like most of us, hooked into an anxiety machine, most waking hours—a PSY OP labyrinth.

The sheer number of fragmented, traumatizing subjects you were supposed to pinball around in, with no clear goal, and always as a passive recipient, strangely ashamed.

The New Me

Tonight, I went out, around 10, and enjoyed the last of the Día de La Cruz festivities. (Videos to come.)

The most astonishing thing of all was that I was able to feel again. I wasn’t numb anymore. I smiled at people—the people dancing in Plaza Del Carmen.

Was this really possible, on the very first day?

Try it.

As soon as you unhook, the Erlkönig loses its power instantly; You get transported back to the real world. The analog world.

I’d like to hear how you fare.

One more photo, taken tonight:

And on an unrelated subject, something truly strange just happened. This photo above—I took it tonight, on my phone. All of a sudden it appeared in yesterday’s post, linked above. I didn’t transfer it; It was as though it just jumped across. How can that happen?

This is what the screen looked like:

How can an iPhone photo fly to a Substack post without getting uploaded?

Hm.