The unknowable possibility of words

Every now and again there’s a conversation that’s so enlightening and moving that it sort of sends your mind reeling. Yesterday, I had one such exchange with a colleague over coffee who I first met when she interned with the company I co-founded. It made me realize how much words matter and the difference they can make.

As the first in her family to go to college, there were a lot of experiences at our agency that were totally new—eye opening even. Of course, I didn’t realize this at the time. She just seemed like a bright young professional with an ability to put people at ease and a willingness to learn. But as we sat and shared coffee, she recounted something that was so humbling and sort of astounding, it touched me deeply.

She talked about trying to orient herself to writing for public relations and then reading a press release I had written just to get a feel for style and tone. Her words were that it was unlike anything she had encountered and made her imagine colors. Unbeknownst to me, the experience led her to take an interest in Chicano literature, which led to some personal development opportunities later.

After her internship ended, I followed her career on LinkedIn as I do with many people I’ve worked with over time. She graduated and went on to do social media for another university, so when the agency that acquired the one I had co-founded was in need of a digital media person, she was at the top of my list. Of course, she hadn’t shared any of her experiences with me at that point, but I remembered her being easy to work with and sharp, so I advocated for her to apply.

For the second time working together, we enjoyed a trusting and productive working relationship. So, when she accepted another position that was a good opportunity for she and her family, I was genuinely pleased for her and thought this coffee meeting would be a nice chance to see her in person after many months and to bid her good luck in her next chapter.

But it was so much more.

This is where the idea of mentorship really shows itself as one dimensional. While I’m further along in my career than her, my sense is that I have learned so much more from her than she from me. Certainly, she did all the things an aspiring young professional should: asking smart questions, humble but eager attitude, willingness to grow and take risks, grateful demeanor, problem solver, etc. Yet in her opening up about her back story and career path to date, I learned about obstacles faced along the way, how words helped and hurt and inspired and confused, so many things I didn’t pick up on, and the value of doing things that may be important to someone else but seem like nothing to you.

The conversation where she recounted how gestures or small things along the way had changed the trajectory of her path answered a question I have been asking myself a lot lately: what difference does it make? In any career, there are things that are required and then there are things we do because they meet a personal standard or seize an unseen opportunity that may feel like they matter, but it often seems like nobody notices. For me, that’s a constant struggle.

More specifically, I essentially write emails and google things for a living so over time that can just feel like it amounts to a lot of data entered and forgotten. Word documents, tweets, Slack messages, Zoom meetings, texts, and on and on and on. They come and they go.

This past year doing it all from a guest bedroom in relative isolation, it has often felt like something a lunatic would do: sitting in a room along and typing things into a machine that nobody will remember. It has sometimes felt like I could just as well be rearranging blocks in a box for eight hours a day. Not unlike repeating any word over and over again, the work can start to seem nonsensical and meaningless.

But as this person and I sat at a table in the park and talked about the impact of these small things in the moment and over time, I was hit with the realization not only did those isolated things matter a great deal—to us both—but that there were likely many others that had a transformational effect, which translated into something else positive and even revelatory. I know this is true of me, people will send a text or comment on a post or send an email and just a few words touch me profoundly and stay with me for years.

I am reminded of the quote “Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.” Throughout the pandemic I have thought of that with the addendum “…on top of the battle you know everything about”. Certainly her words have taught and inspired me—opening my mind. After a long and open conversation in the park with someone I admire so much who took a chance to tell me about things I had done that mattered, I’m now repeating a new sort of mantra:

“Be hopeful, for everyone you meet is looking for possibility and you just might be it.”

“untitled-260” by Ben C is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

A New Agreement

Yours truly.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the agreement you make when you’re born white—and especially a white man. You arrive in a system customized for you by people like you and nobody needs to sit you down to explain how things will work. It’s just evident. You will enjoy the advantages of lucking into having the appropriate colored parts… but only if you don’t speak about the obvious.

Regardless of where and into what situation you find yourself coming up from childhood, whiteness is presented as the default. From historical figures to pop culture to the local business community, you start looking around and thinking: “huh, what a coincidence!” The people at the top have been white men. In your life maybe you begin to notice that even the mediocre white people have it better. And just as soon as you start connecting those dots, you see that people of color and women must work harder to have less.

To roll up into life Caucasian is to understand implicitly not only that you’ve got automatic VIP status, but that it is a structure that only works for you and perpetuates only if you go along with it… and keep quiet about it. And the most insidious part is that most of us shrug and keep maintaining that status quo. You do it because it benefits you and makes things easier—and also because you get the sense very early on that questioning this system is dangerous. It is apparent that if you speak up, you will lose not only the advantages you didn’t earn but also you will be punished by family, friends, community, and colleagues because that threatens their sweet deal.

This sort of default opt-in is insidious and young people especially should probably not be expected to reflexively reject it or see it all on their own. I don’t even know if blaming is useful. It’s like if you walked out your front door one day and someone had put in a new front porch while your neighbors stepped out into mud. You wouldn’t deserve mud thrown at you but you can invite them onto your porch or help them build one of their own.

In the past few years, it has become increasingly acceptable and in some spaces even expected to give lip service about the woes of systemic racism and implicit bias. But you will notice something critical in these conversations: they stop at the conversations—which is to say people get to the discomfort of feeling complicit and they want to know what they can do, but very few push through to actually forgo the unfair perks. We have a sense of the inequality and lack of access, yet the idea of getting out of the way so others can have a shot goes counter to everything in the contract to which we’ve silently agreed. Nobody wants to go to the back of the line when they’re accustomed to cutting every single time.

As we’ve seen over recent decades and months, this will not end until a generation makes a new agreement and abandons the previous advantages. One day soon, unless we want to perpetuate the inequity and victimization of our fellow human beings and the generations that follow, we’ll have to commit to not taking the free passes, not looking the other way, speaking up and sacrificing our self interests, changing cultures and systems—especially where we’ll personally take a hit. We’ll have to find the fortitude to raise our voices and say “I won’t take the vaccine until they get the vaccine” and “have you considered her for a raise before you offer it to me” and “this policy works for me and my family but at the detriment of that family over there… let’s change it.”

Whether you are aware of it, super burdened by it, resistant to it or even in denial, the agreement you make as a white person is a Faustian bargain. By going along quietly, you’ve traded fairness and honesty for opportunities you didn’t earn. Fortunately, breaking that deal is simple enough. Just see that you got lucky and that you don’t want others to miss out because of it. Then work a little every day to sacrifice some of your perks.

Sign on the dotted line.

Hack the algorithms. They favor outrage.

The pandemic. The social injustice. Corrupt systems. Wildfires. The elections. It seems there is no escape from the maddening turmoil and the inanity of human folly refusing reason. “Why won’t you do the simple thing so I don’t have to suffer?!” you want to scream at your computer. Our screens serve us a view of the world that is scary and hopeless, telling us most people are selfish shits that would put us in harm’s way to get a second helping of pie. But is that true?

Once upon a time, the news was something the vast majority of us consumed via our local newspaper and a 30 minute broadcast on one of three networks. As such, we had a shared, objective view—although imperfect—of our community and nation. Then came the internet and as its availability and influence grew, it eroded both the prominence of name-brand journalism and news outlets’ ability to stand firm with non-sensational news.

Slowly but surely, our resistance to news-all-the-time and stories/sources that just confirm our own world views has eroded. By our own behavior (abandonment of paid subscriptions and faithful viewership as well as feeding the beast of clickbait), we have created demand in the marketplace for… how do I put this politely? Bullshit.

We may say that we want unbiased and less sensational journalism but do we put up then shut up? We do not. Instead, we click and share the endless parade of crap. We follow and retweet the National Enquirers of our time: TMZ, Trump, VoteProgressBlueEtc, and friends that share the information equivalent of crappy fast food. And it’s not just making our brains and souls unhealthy. It’s rotting our society—and not just in the polite “sense of propriety” sort of way. It’s tearing us apart.

What do we do about it? Well, it’s not going to be easy. Each of us will need to start how we can, where we can to filter out the noise. The good news is that it is relatively simple and mostly free to do. And it has the dual benefits of improving your outlook and cumulatively telling publishers/platforms that you don’t want systems nor content designed to anger you.

This blog is filled with posts on how you might take steps to have your devices and platforms intrude on your life less, but here are some more granular ways to adjust your settings before you are ready to get off of them entirely.

• Turn off customized/personalized ads on each social network you use. This will clear out boosted posts and ads from showing you more of the views you already have.
• Start your day with a traditional, legacy print-based news source—ideally your local newspaper (which truly needs and deserves your modest subscription fee) but you can also get digital newspapers through your library membership, ResistBot, academic credentials, or just go to Rueters or Associated Press websites. Then end your day with a little offline reading.
• Hide/mute your connections that share a bunch of news and/or stop seeing links from the sources they share. You are probably unknowingly forcing lots of opinions based on a relatively small amount of “friends” who over share news, screenshots, memes and other outrageous content meant to confirm what you think: people are nuts.
• When something makes you angry, take a few minutes to see if it is even true by looking it up online. If it is not true, let the person that posted it know and report the link as false information where you saw it.
• Hack your feed with benevolent and fact-based content by following accounts that have soothing posts like about nature or poetry or history, a “good news” source you enjoy like UpWorthy, an expert that talks about why people act they way they do or how we can—ourselves—adjust our thinking, etc.
• Talk to actual people and get directly involved in other ways to be a part of the solution and to verify that people are good. This is tricky with the pandemic precautions, but you can call/Zoom someone you care about, offer your own expertise or mentorship to a person or organization that needs it, sit across the yard from a neighbor, or just take a walk/bike ride/drive and actively look for simple moments of possibility and beauty vs. trying to spot people without masks. You might be surprised with how it changes your feelings about the world.

I invite you to do at least one of these things today and see what it does for you. Regaining control over the flood of mis/information will look different for each person, but will inevitably improve your sense of wellbeing. After all, if you just give yourself over to the algorithms, you will have nobody else to blame when you can’t find your way out of it.

See also: Excellent series by The New York Times on their podcast “The Daily” called “Rabbit Hole“. Listen to the whole damned thing.

Is this thing on? Ten years of The Off Switch

September of 2010, I had hit a wall. Smart phones, email, and social media were taking over my psyche and I could see no end in sight. So, I pulled the plug. The Off Switch blog here, was a sort of public diary on why and how I would curb the role of technology in my life. Ten years and 70 posts later, I wanted to take a moment to look back on how the experiment has changed me and what work I still have to do.

After spending the morning reading through every post on this blog—some of it self-indulgent and some of it still important personally—I am stricken mainly with how much is the same. I chuckled at some of the technology references (Gowalla, anyone?) certainly, and some of the minutiae is laughable, but what’s unchanged is that this idea that one benefits from being mindful and even vigilant about technology still has great power and utility.

Ten years on, most of my habits are simply the norm for me now. I don’t miss the things I no longer use but at the same time, I still have to be careful not to slip toward the beeps and buzzes invading every moment… because that’s what they are designed to do. The development of hardware and software has not relented and in the past decade, it seems like the march towards omnipresence has accelerated. Alexa, Siri, smart TVs, doorbells with cameras, and a whole host of devices and internet services continue to flood into our lives but I continue to resist.

Am I better for it? I believe so. Especially as this pandemic has raged on and so many friends are consumed by social networks and clinging to their phones and computers, I have clung to my sense of balance. Even before all this, I have re-learned to live without it and created work-arounds so that I can have many moments of peace built into my days. Like a lot of people, I find myself returning to things like walks, baking, music, and writing—and I do as much of that without technology as I can.

But as I’ve said before, this is a discipline I pursue ever-vigilantly. I am perpetually playing wack-a-mole with notifications and other settings, people still give me funny looks (currently on Zoom), and I do my fair share of slipping into bad habits. Through it all, I maintain that it is the mindfulness and the predilection to not defaulting to the default settings that is the real benefit.

As for where this might take me next, I am not sure. Some of you may have noticed that I started blogging here more regularly in the past few months. I am thinking more again about the devices I do have and what I can do without. Since I am not going much of anywhere, my phone hasn’t been a burden and gets a lot less use, but I have been giving side eye to my Apple Watch and even my iPad. I long for the times when a computer was the device. I have been working on bigger chunks of my day not online and always working to avoid the internet an hour before and after sleeping. It seems that buffer is more important than ever.

Of course, the real gift of this set of habits has nothing to do with technology. Quite the opposite. In the countless hours, days, and months I have cumulatively reclaimed, I have witnessed unspeakable moments of beauty and humanity. The look in my son’s eyes as he watches me with wonderment. My wife’s unguarded strength and beauty. The quiet grace of our dog. Tiny, fleeting details in the city scape, nature or on a stranger. My mother aging before my eyes. How the horizon never changes but the skyline does daily. Mainly it is the sort of details one wishes they had paid attention when they had the chance. Well, I had the chance and I took it.

Before I continue on, I did want to look back on my top ten posts from the past ten years—not on how many were read or shared but ones that represented something important to me personally. For those of you who have followed along at any point, I appreciate you stopping by. Whether you realized it or not, you have been part of keeping me accountable to my commitment. I hope that you have taken away a concept or a setting that have given you back a little bit of your own autonomy.

In chronological order…

1. Finding the off switch—and using it

2. Folding a fitted sheet

3. Phoning it in

4. Keep it in your pants

5. Courtoisie

6. The fortitude of denial

7. Even less is even more

8. Which came first: the decline of decency… or the internet to show us?

9. Addicted

10. Don’t look away

From a safe distance

It’s pretty amazing how this pandemic has awakened us to the way things are. Almost as if a giant chasm opened up in the earth, a line was drawn down the middle of our society: on one side people, industries, businesses, and spaces that were safe to operate and on the other… ones that were not.

Then a few months in after weeks of lockdowns and other safeguards, the Black Lives Matter movement erupted in protests and dominated news and conversation. Everyone had some reflecting to do and it seems like most people took that opportunity to do so. I thought about my layers of privilege as a straight, white, American man with a middle-class up bringing and career. Try as I may, understanding the experience of others is elusive and I can never fully “get it”.

But a layer of privilege I have also thought about—and appreciated—is that I can safely and effectively work from home on a computer. Thanks to fast internet, a reasonably new computer, a willing employer, and no shortage of communications work, I have been as busy as ever. That’s pretty amazing. I am thankful every single day for the ability to stay at home with my family.

Many are not so lucky. Either they work a hands-on job out in the world or they work in a facility that must (or can’t) operate in-person. Or worse, they have service jobs or tech-based jobs that just aren’t feasible right now. That’s heartbreaking.

While we can grouse about how safeguards and protective measures have affected us, the nature of COVID-19 was nobody’s fault but it has disproportionately had an impact on people whose livelihoods don’t rely on technology. And I have seen first-hand how business owners, workers, teachers, and other essential laborers have adapted with astonishing speed and cunning to make their work safe and to keep bringing us the products and services we need.

Naturally, I am thinking about my chin stroking and musings on this vs. that technology or just the right kind of configuration. They are preferences that affect only my state of mind and I realize that most of that doesn’t matter. But in the run up to the 10th anniversary of The Off Switch, I am remembering how many ideas about presence and connection were actually prescient. Technology has saved me in many ways. It has connected me but it has also kept me apart. While making it possible for me to work and see friends, I long for nothing more than uninterrupted face to face time that’s physical and tactile and blissfully not digital.

I can’t help but to wonder if—as we emerge from this public health crisis—we’ll prioritize time away from the internet and devices, whether that’s in nature or embracing loved ones or undulating together at music venues or parties. It is hard to imagine now, but I long for that sensory experience at an almost cellular level. I am in no rush to socialize for the sake of just doing that, but I do think a reckoning is coming in terms of our physical connection.

Getting a signal

A month ago, I went primitive camping in the Davis Mountains by myself. It had been around ten years since I’d been backpacking (although I “car camp” around once a year) and more than twenty since I’d camped alone. The pandemic was a big motivator to get away but being off the grid is always rejuvenating. As it turned out, I got more than I bargained for.

Long shadows on a morning day-hike in Davis Mountains State Park

I chose Davis Mountains State Park and primitive camping for the cool nights and remote camp spots. My plan was to carry everything I needed in (no water is available) and then I could hike back down the mountain in the hottest part of the day. Well, it didn’t exactly work out that way.

Since it had been so long since I had backpacked, I was very selective with what I packed, my food choices, and thoughtful about how much water I would need. But something about state and national parks is that if you dare to plot a trip the rangers rarely caution you against it. I planned for four days and three nights—reserving the most remote spot in the park in advance—and the ranger who checked me in said it would be a two hour hike in when I arrived a little after 4 p.m.

As it turned out, the 10 liters of water the guy at REI had advised me to bring was a lot heavier and more unwieldy than I had factored. Between my aging pack pack, my aging body, and the weight of that water, it took me nearly six hours to get all my stuff to that camping spot. It was partially the heat and incline, partially the rock-strewn trail, and mostly having to leave some of my supplies part the way up then go back for it at dusk. But I was there and grateful by 10 p.m.

The next two days were a mixture of glorious and harrowing—not because I encountered any daunting wildlife or ran out of something essential but because the cool desert nights gave way to sizzling hot days and no place to escape it. For the aforementioned reasons, I couldn’t just skip back down the mountain and go into town so instead I mostly sat and just existed.

Serenading the peak was a favorite activity

The antithesis of being lost in technology, I the spent 8-10 hours a day I had outside of meals and other survival activities doing things like playing the ukulele, writing in a journal, and mostly looking at nature going about its business around me. My mind went to all sorts of places it hadn’t been in many, many years. I thought a lot about my early twenties especially, likely because that’s when I drove around the country by myself on summer, camping in 19 states, and also when I backpacked across Europe—also by myself although I did make some friends along the way.

That was a decade in my life of independence before I spent my days in front of a computer and it was also blissfully before the internet, iPods, smartphones, laptops, tablets, Netflix and smart watches took over. I was just me exploring the world. So, for the first time in two decades, I was just with nature and my thoughts. And even with the heat, the sunburn, the water scarcity and the lumpy ground on which I slept, it was blissfully peaceful. No news. No COVID-19 concerns. No social media. No texts. Just glorious views.

To say it was rejuvenating would be a gross understatement. The experience was an important reminder about so many things. I remembered what center feels like. I remember that even things like water and food and shelter are neither promised nor easy for everyone. I remembered that technology is not essential. I remembered that there’s a whole world out there waiting to be explored and revered.

After three nights of glorious stargazing and quietude, I drank my very last sip of water after breakfast and packed up for the hike back down the mountain. This time, I made it in under two hours since I didn’t have that food or water weight. It was great to get back to the comfort of my car and air conditioning, then talking to my wife and friends on the phone. But I re-emerged more at peace and with a lot more perspective.

Remix what you’ve got

Like most of you sitting at home for work, personal life, etc., I find myself re-examining a lot about how my house functions (or doesn’t). While I admit I have been tempted to start ordering things online to refresh my daily routine, two things have prevented me from doing that. First, I am committed to supporting local retailers that are suffering so much—while I am mostly resistant to getting out and about. Second, the more I look at what we have in our home, the more I realize that there is a lot of space and things that we are neglecting.

In the 100+ days since the self-isolation began here in Texas, I have noticed quite a few things in the guest-bedroom/home office where I sit now. Old technology that was set aside, CDs, semi-plausible button-down shirts (good enough for Zoom), and even some forgotten musical instruments. The more I sit in it and the quieter things get, the more I realize that—like a space craft barreling towards Mars—that we’ve got to make use of the spaces and equipment we have.

For the past couple of weekends, my wife and I have been purging crap from the garage, which has served as storage for our old business files, quasi-art-studio, and customary functions like workshop and tool storage. We’ve got this idea to turn the garage into a home-gym and ancillary hang-out space but a comment my wife made changed my thinking about the possibilities. She suggested I consider a music room there as well.

Before COVID-19, I practiced with my band weekly and we performed every 4-to-6 weeks, so I not only had a built-in creative outlet… I had a place for all of that stuff to be. Now, not so much. So, I took a good hard look at “my corner” of the garage then started breaking it down… quite literally. I demolished the old workbench and just kept going until I realized that about 3/4 of it was stuff I didn’t use and some of the remainder is aspirational at best.

Once I had it down to a blank space, I really got excited—and a little emotional. Something about the smell of old tools always makes me think of my dad. In any case, I started re-building a creative space just for me from scratch using exclusively things we already had. And there was a lot to work with once I really paid attention. Everything from the hardware to the decor to the electrical aspects were just sort of laying around. And in a weekend I was able to largely convert a messy and non-functional space into something new that brings me joy.

My suggestion is to try this yourself. Start purging things you no longer use, but set aside things you might use if you only had the space. You might be surprised with what inspires you and what delights are waiting just around the corner.

Slacktivism (and White Fragility) Don’t Matter

If you are alive and conscious in 2020 on earth, you are being forced to look at the countless ways in which systemic racism and police brutality suppress Black lives in many and mortal ways. As with most things in modern life and especially amidst a global pandemic, most of us are seeing this through the lens of technology. Mixed in with re-shared memories of other times and photos of bread we may be baking are harrowing videos, news articles, scholarly papers, and personal accounts of the ways that racism has never really gone away, but rather been rebranded much like a bottle of syrup.

I have little new or profound to bring to the overall discussion on racism and injustice at this moment, but what I have noticed is the behavior of myself and those white friends/colleagues who are varying degrees of shocked and dismayed, but seemingly unwilling to move past uncomfortable into real examination and then sacrifice.

If you are unfamiliar with the term “slacktivism”, it is essentially a digital semblance of activism but just the talking about and sharing content or information rather than showing up, voting, making the calls, and doing the difficult work. The nature of how our smart phones have become our peepholes to the world makes this both broadly tempting and deeply problematic. Think of the past two weeks. You watched the video or heard about it, you made a personal statement and maybe messaged a few Black friends and colleagues, you shared some harsh memes, you chimed in on a comment thread to correct a friend of a friend, you followed a bunch of new accounts, you read some blogs.

But what else?

Did you donate or volunteer? Did you create a partnership or opportunity? Did you give up your seat so a person of color could have a spot at the table? Did you speak up even and especially when it made other white people feel uncomfortable?

If not, you need to do more. We all do. Clicking on some things and feeling bummed out is really just the very beginning. We must push past feeling bad and past the links and memes to make way for people that need the access and have solutions—real solutions. If anything, the discomfort and the social media are a distraction because they give the illusion of difficult change when they are really just ephemeral white noise.

What’s become clear to me as someone with privilege upon privilege (straight, white, American male working comfortably from my home), are three things:

1. We need to put down the phones and pick up the baton being passed to us as people of conscience and access. We need to let our Black friends and colleagues rest and heal while we use our positions of to advocate and to knock down barriers. If anything, the phones and social media are fooling us into believing were participating. We’d do better to look into a mirror or speak to someone with real lived experience.
2. We’re often so concerned with hurting white people’s feelings, we fall short of speaking the truth and acting on it.
3. Slacktivism and discomfort are the beginning, but what’s next is giving up our advantage, seat at the table, and illusion of wokeness to make way for actual change—which means we likely will need to sit down and listen.

While I started The Off Switch in 2010 to examine and modify my personal habits around technology, I am increasingly seeing a societal blindspot. We’re holding up our phones to film the moment but we’re not in the moment nor are we taking responsibility. That’s hard work but it is so critical.

For my part, I am donating to causes that don’t just feel good but that are doing the messy but essential work of fighting injustice and protecting rights like ACLU. I hope you’ll join me. I am handing the microphone to people of color and then shutting my mouth. I am looking at my sphere of influence (off social media) and having those uncomfortable conversations about injustice and racism backed by action.

It’s really the least I can do.

Our default settings

I often find myself asking “how did we get here as a society?” and “why can’t people understand basic, shared facts about reality?!” Human behavior has always been a head-scratcher, I suppose, but in the past few years and then the last two months especially, I am overwhelmed by a sense of being befuddled by what seems to be a splintered perception of reality.

It turns out there is a reason—and it has been engineered to work that way.

Up until 40 years ago, people in our communities shared the same, relatively small number of information sources: daily hometown newspapers and nightly news broadcasts. They didn’t always tell us the news we wanted to hear in the way we wanted to hear it, but the professionals in charge deciphered the most urgent news of the day and we largely paid attention then shared ensuing discourse over meals, coffee, and water coolers.

Then came cable news which created a hunger for something we didn’t basically need: 24 hours of stories and hype and on-air commentary about the news. Then 15 years later came the internet and, for a while, it functioned like the microfiche at the library: there for the curious but largely not curated. But with the decline of traditional media consumption came the erosion of advertising dollars so those publishers and others decided clicks and views were the thing we needed to chase after.

And that, dear reader, has led us to where we are today.

Anytime you participate in any online content platform like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, Tiktok, etc., you are not just ambling through images, video, links, and text that you find interesting. What’s actually happening is that those platforms algorithms are processing your online behaviors—historically and in realtime—and feeding you content designed to keep you on as long as possible by showing you more and more of things like you have already seen.

So, instead of the balanced media meals served up to us by the traditional media cooks, we’re now largely on a diet of just a few snacks; like giving a child only Hot Cheetos. The sad reality of social media and most content-based online platform is that we are not so much the consumer as the product. The publishers make money selling access to our eyeballs based on our demographic attributes and our behaviors. As such, the platforms where we spend the lion’s share of our time are engineered not for our optimal experience or for learning/discovering information in any sort of holistic or fact-based way. In fact, they are designed to send us down rabbit holes—biased echo chambers created not merely by our friend groups, but by the programmers that have mandates to show us information that confirms our world view, sending us deeper and deeper into the extreme reaches of our own ideologies.

If that sounds far fetched, I recommend doing some reading on the topic and for the sake of balance, ethical journalism, and fact-based vetting of sources, get off of YouTube and stick with research papers from old-school universities or legacy media outlets that have been around 75+ years. One of the most digestible works of analysis I have come across recently is the New York Times series “Rabbit Hole” as part of their podcast The Daily.

The series looks at one platform in particular—YouTube—and focuses on a young man that was radicalized by falling into the video content abyss as guided by recommendations served up to him. The reporters look at his browser history and they also talk to YouTube’s CEO and former programmers. It is a sobering and enlightening journey into the minds of an overwhelming number of Americans who get their information and base their world view not on the newspaper or even broadcast media that suits their fancy, but rather videos by self-proclaimed experts talking in an authoritative way to get more subscribers and views, to prop up their own personal livelihood.

There is no accountability, no fact-checking, no editor or producer holding them to a higher ethical standard or to… you know… facts. And there is certainly no demand to give any manner of perspective. That doesn’t seem like a healthy or fruitful way for anyone to get their information, but it certainly explains why some people believe in fact-based journalism and science while others are so convinced in things like the “Plandemic” or the evil 5G towers, etc. Get into any kind of online debate with someone about an unhinged-theory and they are bound to point to YouTube videos or some nutty sounding URL for “proof”.

When I started this blog 10 years ago, I named it “The Off Switch” because the devices in my life seemed to be always on in a way that had become intrusive. I was seeking ways to adjust the software settings and the hardware itself in a way that worked for me rather than the other way around. This “Rabbit Hole” series has reminded me of something really important that I hope you will take a few minutes to examine as well: your default settings. I mean that figuratively and literally.

Have a look at your auto-pilot ways of engaging with your devices and the platforms on them to ensure you aren’t just slipping into a passive role. Also, take a little time regularly to look at and adjust your settings. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and your browser of choice all come with default settings that are favorable to them and their advertisers. Out of the box, they track what you’re doing so they can spoon-feed you what you’re seeing. Turn off auto-play. Turn off suggested and recommended content. Turn off ad-trackers. Turn off as much as possible so that you aren’t sucked down the rabbit hole of bias and insular thinking.

If you do, this is what I predict will happen: you will see more content that you disagree with from people and publishers you don’t normally see. You will be more engaged with what you are searching for rather then just what you are being served. And you will start thinking more critically about the information and the platforms themselves. Instead of channel surfing, you will start using them as tools.

And your brain and the world will be better for it.

Advanced settings:

• Facebook: Hide all posts from publishers that seemed inherently biased or agenda-driven like off-brand URLs (hint: anything with a political party or color in the name)
• Twitter: Block the aggressive trolls and unfollow biased media accounts
• Unfollow people that push meme and video based information not based in fact because, whether you like it or not, they are influencing your perceptions
• Follow the Associated Press, the CDC, World Health Organizations and local public health accounts for a baseline of facts
• Don’t watch YouTube or national TV news for news or learning. That stuff is entertainment. And certainly don’t share off-brand/conspiracy content as “facts”
• Not so much a setting as a suggestion to stem the tide of disinformation: subscribe to your local newspaper and a national, name-brand newspaper today. And if you have someone in your life that consumes no actual news reported by actual journalists, buy them a gift subscription to a weekly paper delivered to their house.

Why do we find it so hard to do the easy thing?

It is the oldest, simplest, and I guess the most challenging thing in the human experience. Me want thing. Not enough for all. Me take. You suffer. Through the eons and across each of our lives, we are presented with myriad moral opportunities to do something with relative risk for ourselves and relative huge gains for another. But so often we don’t help.

I studied this for years with client Aware Awake Alive and then California Polytechnic University in what became WITH US: The National Center for Peer Accountability. It’s an area of particular focus on college campuses called “bystander intervention” and it essentially means, if you see someone in trouble… help. The idea is train students on how to see a need and then what to do about it.

Seems simple enough to me. In life, we’re presented with glimpses of one another’s suffering and have a chance to help. For most people, if they live long enough, they realize that not much else matters and that we’re all connected. Hoarding stuff, prioritizing our own tribe, and selfish behavior hold us all back. But amidst the day to day, people struggle with the concept. So when we see that person in trouble, we rationalize:

• Relationship abuse or sexual assault? Maybe that’s not what’s going on. I shouldn’t get involved.
• Dangerously drunk, high, or addicted? Not my problem and what can I do?
• Bullying? Isn’t that how we learn how to overcome adversity?
• Sick? How can I know for sure and isn’t that an invasion of privacy?
• Homeless or headed there? Is my money really going to matter?

The simplest example is if you are walking by a pool and you see someone drowning, you jump in or throw a life preserver. That requires little of you and means the difference between life and death to them. Almost nobody would keep walking, even though getting involved could be messy with EMS and maybe legal concerns or some new relationship that’s implied.

You would do the simple, quick thing to save a life.

Why, then, when presented with a global deadly pandemic that’s taken nearly 300,000 lives globally and just over 83,000 in the U.S. alone—so far—and we know that simply staying home, washing our hands, and wearing a simple cloth mask on our faces when we need to go out will save lives and prevent sickness and economic devastation to households/communities… so many of us shrug and say “but I want to be free to do it the old way”.

Right now, countless times on your block and in your family and all over your city, people are choosing comfort and personal whimsy over protecting the very lives of their neighbors? Only the most fringe crackpots think the death statistics aren’t real. Everybody else can see the way things have been headed so quickly. And yet so many choose what’s easy and familiar over what’s sensibly humane. Why?

Are we so selfish and short sighted that we can’t just sit on our ass at home or slip on a mask as we do as we otherwise please? If for no other reason than to not risk our own health or that of a loved one or the things in our town we want to still be around after this mess… it seems like even to the most self-centered dolt that we’d just do the simple thing that only slightly inconveniences us just to save lives.

But so many refuse. And they will continue to refuse until the bodies literally pile up and our ability to call ourselves moral and decent people will also be on that pile. All because we couldn’t be bothered to consider one another.

And it was so easy.