A Night of Rain and Shine

While cooking myself some simple ramen noodles, I took a look outside my dorm kitchen window and peered into the night to see what I could see beyond the screen wire. It was raining, and through it I could see a lamplight, shimmering in elegance like a full moon, and was casting its light onto a puddle in the middle of the parking lot two stories down.

I sighed and wondered if this is what life is like without social media, without smartphones, without constant distractions. And that's when I heard a ruckus from the screen across from the lot, from a rental house. Just another group of college goers having a blast.

So I just stared out.

iazia

I stopped using Facebook, Twitter and Instagram a long time ago - it helps that I generally don't like people knowing my business, or feeling weird when I try to take pics with my phone. I've been using notebooks again, and it seems to help clear my mind a bit without doomscrolling. Tumblr is probably the only SM I go onto, and even then it's just to update my theme and fill in my queue. I guess it helps that the Tumblr algorithm is much more bearable than the Twitter one.

But I do wonder often how life would be like now if social media hadn't become the behemoth that it is today. I grew up inbetween the era of no internet, stranger danger, and the conglomerate monster that is SM. How would things be different? Or the same? Who knows...

theoddballphilosopher

I usually only use Instagram to keep in touch with my high school friends and Discord to keep in touch with my college Clubs. I mainly use tumblr to keep in touch with an old friend from DeviantArt.

I can't help but feel there is a supremely simplistic appeal to using sites like these ones.

sonam

I am also giving up using social media all the time. Although, i need SM to do my job.

I long for offline activity as opposed to online brainrot. This place is somewhere in the middle as I only come here one time of day and read and write intentionally (at least, more than other SM)

On a good note: I am writing on Notebooks and reading more, and i'm back here again after two years

theoddballphilosopher

Using a site like Midnight Pub has been a very different experience for me in opposition with other social media sites. This place is somewhere in the middle, it's very simple.

inquiry

I tried Facebook and Twitter, but deleted the accounts in maybe a month, as both seemed like havens for what I'll call "longform aversive eternal septemberites", making such sites dullsville for someone who cut their online teeth on local BBS fora and USENET.

theoddballphilosopher

Septemberities? Remember having those at the beginning of every school year. I'm just content using simple sites like midnight pub.

inquiry

Hmmm... looks like I misspelled what I intended to... should have been 'Septemberites'. Not that it would have helped much, though, I guess... kind of a stretch of a term that felt cute at the time....

But, yeah, the ongoing love affair between "simple" and "good"....

theoddballphilosopher

Yeah, that's what I often strive for.

tffb

due to the addictive nature of it (SM), life w/o social media is just that - life minus social media. The quicker one leaves it, the longer they stay away from it (for me, forever), and the more things one experiences when not pulled in, distracted by it, is a 100% net positive.

theoddballphilosopher

So many people have gotten used to it. One of the only reasons I keep my (deactivated) smartphone is because I need to pay for my dorm laundry for it. That, and my mother quite frankly begged me to keep using it to stay in touch with her, rather than the flip phone I bought myself.

We've grown so reliant on them to fulfill certain tasks, that they cannot be done any other way.