Your friends are the doomscroll kidnappers
Yes, they miss you. Keep scrolling.
You can't escape the short-video doomscroll machine that has ravaged your attention, killed your creativity and made you stop reading books.
You try, of course. You block Reddit on your laptop, delete Instagram, swear to never install TikTok and only use Twitter as a website. But it doesn't matter. All of them are now the same and you have nowhere to run.
"My friends are there," you tell yourself. If you stop checking DMs and sharing Reels, you'll lose touch with them. You're not wrong. They're as addicted as you are to the doomscroll machine. And you're in part to blame.
Every cool, funny, insightful, raunchy and risky video you share carries your feelings for them. The ones you secretly like and hope they get the message. The ones you miss too much but don't know how to talk to anymore. The ones you're starting to forget and whose connection you barely keep alive with obscure inside jokes you both still share.
These emotions are real.
And every time you send them a video you saw on the doomscroll, they feel those feelings. And the machine infects them a bit more. They think of you, but they have forgotten how to talk to you. So they react with emojis: laugh, splash, fire, heart.
You uninstall everything for a while and block as many apps as your work allows, because some of us work inside these damn things. And when the apps are not where they used to be, you realize for the first time —
My God, your fingers open them unconsciously.
You watch your own fingers, with a mind of their own, try to open a deleted app without even thinking.
The doomscroll machine has trained you, like a dog, to never leave.
This time, though, you won't be back. You have so much free time. You find your Kindle again, listen to new music, reinstall the educational apps, take the courses you always wanted to learn, walk around parks, watch some shows on your list. Maybe you'll even read an actual paper book.
A green circle in a WhatsApp message drops the doomscroll machine back onto your screen. You click it. It's a disappointing, deformed meme shared by a family member. But it brings back memories of those videos from the people you love.
You remember your internet friends, the ones living elsewhere, with whom you loved spending time. But as we grow old, we settle in different parts of the planet and drift apart. Except for those stories shared on Instagram. The TikToks and Reels in DMs that reconnect you to the person you were when you were with them.
You reinstall one app, just to check, really quick. The machine kidnaps you again.
Those books remain unfinished.
Esto es una radiografÃa de todos nosotros, la adicción al scroll infinito es una realidad.
Anoche veÃa un video educativo acerca de automatización con IA, y a pocos metros de distancia de mÃ, tenÃa a una persona haciendo scroll infinito en Instagram.
El video que yo veÃa tenÃa una duración de una hora y media; al terminarlo, la persona que veÃa sus redes sociales continuó haciéndolo, y esta persona habÃa empezado primero que yo.
Es increÃble cómo desechamos el tiempo en redes sociales. Sà tenemos suficiente tiempo, el problema está en que lo desperdiciamos de la forma más estúpida.
Gracias, Freddie, por compartir esta nota.
Es desgarrador pero es la realidad, las redes aprovechan esos sentimientos que inherentemente todos tenemos y desarrollamos, y lo usan en contra nuestro, se aprovechan de la facilidad de tomarlos como producto de venta y retención, usando nuestras conexiones reales, e invadiendo nuestra privadidad y parte de la naturaleza humana.
Por otro lado los jugadores que optimizan para el otro lado, de evitar la adicción, son mas contados, y la tienen mas jodida por la naturaleza de su misión u objetivo, pero pues asi mismo son los que más respeto.
Gran Articulo.