We don’t really care how many Facebook friends you have. We don’t even care how many Facebook friends we have. We love you, but we are drowning in useful information and the minutiae of your daily existence, even in the aggregate, simply aren’t as interesting as you think they are.
We like people. We like listening to people when they have something to say, something raw and powerful and intricate and beautiful and angry and sad. We’re not interested in 140 character brainfarts. We’re not actually all that concerned about what you’re doing right now.
Our gorge actually begins to rise at the idea of being interested in what Lady Gaga is doing right now.
We refuse to define ourselves by the people we friend on our social media platforms, the picocelebrities we follow on Twitter. We’re just not that into you, even if you are Our Very Good Friends. We’re trying to carve out some quiet and contemplative places in our lives and we’re going to do our best not to fill them right up again with dross.
We stand in opposition to the slicing and dicing of our thoughts into smaller and smaller quanta. We seek to set aside the Eratosthenes’ sieves of our attention spans, from which, instead of prime numbers settling to earth, it’s a hail of canonical cheese sandwiches pelting down out of the aether. We choose to leave unsatisfied the desire for an ongoing background hum that turns out to be the choral sound of our brain cells giving up the ghost.
We don’t follow orders, we don’t follow the Leader, we don’t follow you on Twitter. Follow all you want, friends, but we’re not going to follow suit.
Are we being arrogant? Shortsighted? Cantankerous? Should we get back on our porch, go back to muttering over our charmingly archaic long-form blog posts, stop shouting at the kids to get off our goddamn lawn? Probably.
But we’re not going to back down. Words have meaning. We don’t follow, we lead.
Best. Post. Ever.
Every time Metsler says, “Lead, follow, or get out of the way,” I get out of the way.
I’m so sick of this social media crud I’m ready to pull the plug on all of it and the net except for work. I find myself longing for the “good old days” on the net of the early to mid 90′s.
now what?
Fuck art, let’s dance!
I tweeted the hell out of this awesome post. I like Twitter, I’m not gonna lie. Then again, crackheads like crack. So it’s not like my affinity for “the last nail in the coffin of connected thought” is meant as a counterargument.
Sometimes I feel like a mole behind the enemy lines.
Then again you know how double agents do. They fall in love with the enemy.
Timothy Leary said, “It is my job to corrupt young people with the contagious, infectious idea of individual freedom”.
It’s everyone’s job, I think.
How does one access the cancer to cure it?
Buddha or Jesus or someone like that said, “Be in the world, but not of it.” Or “Wear the world like a loose garment.”
You gotta go where the people are if you wanna help them.
I go where the people are because we can all help each other get out of there. Maybe.
Go West, young man or woman: http://americanwest.crowdvine.com
Raw experience is my favorite thing to think about and then pursue. The above link is a staging ground for a “Westward Invasion” – essentially a tour of the American West led by me. I don’t know jack about the West, which is why I’m doing it.
Why not.
Anyway you seem interesting. Holler at a brother whenever. And read the LONG FORM info available at the above link, if you’re into raw experience as the antidote to all this “giving up the ghost”.
Piece owt,
Will
The utter truth. Pure, direct and complete. Must constantly fight off nasty and dangerous imposing garbage who never stop accusing of a zillion things the innocents who just refuse to submit to slavery, in every way…
Yeah. I hear you and I feel less alone.
i have to say, i can totally relate.
Screens and devices lead to sensory deprivation. (Paper is a far better sensory experience than pixels). If you are addicted to the Internet and/or your devices, you will experience memory loss and increased suggestibility. Play chess and basketball with real people. Read real books. Create art with your hands in a non-electronic medium. Ride a bike. Don’t give in to the virtual. You don’t live there. It’s OK to visit, but if you wallow in it, you will be changed.
Follow Me
I understand that you have complaints about social sites, but I don’t see any leading going on here. What positive ideas are on your mind/minds? Or maybe it is just up to each individual to fill their lives with meaningful activities. We do that, but each one’s definition of meaningful is different.
this post is fucking awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When Jesus said follow me….the world got fucked up ever since.