The Dewokening or "Why I'm making my social media (slightly) less woke"

Feb 3

Feb 3 The Dewokening or "Why I'm making my social media (slightly) less woke"

Mental Wellness, Mental Illness, Mixed Emotions, Self-Care, Health & Fitness,

Ok, so this is a funny one. In the great categorisation of issues, it falls squarely in the “privileged western millennial” bracket. It’s not easy for me to admit, and I am not proud of this but, for the last year or so, I have been actively depressing myself through the medium of social media; specifically: Instagram.

I know what you’re thinking. Instagram is a haven. It’s like Facebook (and Facebook still gets the money) but with all the cute puppies and kitties and none of the aggressive moralising from people you barely know. Well, if there’s one thing I’m good at, it’s taking chill things and making them depressing. It’s yet another one of my unmarketable talents (of which there are many).

How did this happen, you ask? Well, I’ll tell you. Like all of us, when I first joined Instagram back in 2013, I promptly posted exactly one photo (of a Christmas cake), checked around for people I knew, and then didn’t use it for another two years. Then, when I got a job and started having enough money to have some fun adventures, I rediscovered the medium to use as a sort of travel/ fun diary; something I could boot up whenever I was feeling low (or lacking in Vitamin D) to prove to myself that I wasn’t leading a boring life 100% of the time.

This was working really well. And then 2016 really hit.

have no desire to go into the myriad small and large ways that 2016 was psychologically damaging for we innocent, middle-class liberals who had up until that year been happily living our multicultural lives and looking forward for a Star Trek: TNG-style future to somehow reach us (without, of course, thinking about WWIII & the Eugenics Wars…). I don’t need to. And, to be honest, I don’t want to. Suffice it to say that instead of spending our time prancing around on the holodeck, the world started to go full-Discovery (aka STD – sorry, sorry “Disco”).

The world was depressing, our futures and our hopes for our futures were going up in smoke and it felt like being uninformed in a time like that was inexcusable. So, what’s a good millennial to do to get informed? Mine the internet for information. I mean, come on, I’ll go to a library for an Ethics textbook but I REFUSE to read a newspaper. Australian oligarchs don’t need my money. (And yes, The Sun (a tabloid) and The Times (kind of a paper) are owned by the same guy. And, yes, that guy is a demon. The more you know.) As an aside: let me be clear. It’s not a left/right thing, it’s an honesty thing. Censorship is real, kids.

ANYWAY.

I followed some really great and interesting people. Feminists, egalitarians, disability advocates, experts on race, writers, politicians, the list goes on. I learned a lot from these people. I still do. I felt a part of community of like-minded people. People who cared about people. People who didn’t hold themselves out as better than anyone else merely because of the way they were born. (To put it generally) And things were looking up. The world was looking a little less full of fascists and a little more filled with good people.

But the thing about good people is they can’t help but shine a light on the bad people. It wasn’t too long until this group of people who had inspired and comforted me, made me feel, well, bad. Look, I know what you’re thinking and that’s not it. I didn’t feel guilty for not participating enough, my particular brand of wokeness is more on the happy, Anglican, “tea, cakes and acceptance” end of things and I have never claimed that it wasn’t. I may swear like a sailor but I’m a wholesome little lamb if you pay enough attention. No, what unsoothed me no end was the VOLUME of the horror. Every day was another shooting, another miscarriage of justice, another rape, another tragedy. It was individuals and it was countries. It was past and it was present and we know for damn sure it’s going to be the future. It was, too put it bluntly, all that little bit too much.

So, a few weeks ago I sat down and systematically unfollowed most (but not all) of the exclusively “woke” accounts. Then, I followed yoga practitioners, travel bloggers and cute animals. And the world (and by that I, of course, mean my Instagram feed) was hopeful again.

And that’s how it remains.

The world is still rough stuff and it looks to only be getting worse. So I’ll leave you with this. For people of care about our futures (which should be all of us), it is so important to be engaged with the world we’re living in; if only to avoid getting sucked in to the lies and awfulness that seems to be around every corner. But, it’s also important to give yourself some space to breathe. To be carefree for a moment and to be happy. It doesn’t really matter how you do it. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum.