The one about the phones

on david foster wallace and algorithmic-friendly anti-algorithm content

i.

If I was ever hopelessly destitute, unable to rely on the generosity of friends and family members and on my very last dime, here’s what I’d do:

I’d post a Substack essay entitled something like “how i learned to stop worrying and love being off my phone” or “15 things I do to instead of doomscrolling” or “my month without social media.”¹

In the beginning, I’d lament about how we’re all addicted to our phones, how we all desperately want to get off of them, how this unfortunate category includes even me, the person writing from the enlightened future. I’d talk about how our phones rob us of connection, prevent us from engaging fruitfully in the world around us, numb us to sensation and feed us algorithmically curated slop. Then I’d present how I’d fixed everything.

To avoid accusations of being purposefully obtuse or out of touch, I would of course caveat these solutions by reminding the audience of the inescapable tech oligarchy that is slowly encroaching on our every possible real estate, mental or physical. Luckily, I have already set up this premise brilliantly in the first section. I would remind the audience that building a habit takes time, and it’s not always easy, but it’s been so rewarding.

And then I’d put in the paywall, behind which I’d briefly catalogue the last few (days, weeks, months.. probably “months” if I’m really down on my luck) of changed behavior, creating a written montage of times I read a book on a park bench, hung out with my friends, was pleasantly bored. Perhaps I’d include a day-in-the-life journal to document what I’d been up to with all my precious, reclaimed time.

ii.

“Well, there are two options. One is you direct the attack only to the people who are willing to listen to the complexity, but those aren’t the people who are enslaved by entertainment anyway. Or you find some way to make the attack on entertainment entertaining, in which case you’ve been captured by the very thing you’re fighting against.”

— David Foster Wallace, unedited interview with ZDF (2003)

The “algorithm-friendly, anti-algorithm content”² that’s been ubiquitous in my feeds across several platforms, including this one, seems at first to belong to the latter option in Wallace’s³ dichotomy: making the attack on entertainment entertaining itself. Here, DFW is in a pre-smartphone era talking about television, and in the context of the interview, he’s talking not just about the “entertainment value” of certain media, but the simultaneous frenetic and anesthetizing effect it tends to have on us, one that is undoubtedly heightened in our current age.

But, as the saying goes, the world you were born into no longer exists, and I don’t think that DFW’s dichotomy holds up anymore. It’s not just Wall-e dolts who can’t rip their faces away from the screens (and it never really was — DFW himself admits to not having a television in his own home because he can’t control his intake). The people who care about complexity are currently caring about it so deeply that they habitually seek out writing about how to get away from algorithmically streamlined lives and back into the real, chaotic world.

When I think about my own impulse to read this kind of work, I realize that I’m not actually seeking information. The trend of writing about “getting off your phone” comes in the wake of years of clear damage. Collectively, we know that the negative effects of an algorithmically-driven, short-form content ecosystem are plentiful, seen in our own lives, rupturing our own relationships with others and the world. When I read about someone who’s put in the work of getting off their phone, the quick tips are immaterial. I have a Brick device that locks my phone. I have digital screen time limits. I have plenty of hobbies and interests and activities to occupy me in my real life. And yet, the pull to “the liquid crystal,” to quote Lorde, remains strong and disheartening. So I keep reading.

iii.

I’m not innocent here. My personal “phone bad, experiencing life good” piece is one of my most-read on the platform. To my own credit, I had some half-decent things to say about the value of information in the attention economy, Susan Sontag, the works… but I still played the algorithm, as one must if trying to maintain relevance on an algorithmic platform. I opened with the Mirror Neuron Fantasy.

i hope this is how u always feel when reading me

The Mirror Neuron Fantasy is an amazing tool for marketing and audience retention. That term is something I just made up, but mirror neurons themselves are real — the neurons that fire when you witness someone perform an action are the same ones that would fire were you to perform the action yourself. Mirror neurons are why I have a clinical obsession with watching operation_niki deep-clean her kitchen, restock her fridge, or do her skincare routine. It’s why I’ve read a few of those listicles about getting off your phone. Just witnessing it feels like I’ve done something myself.

The Mirror Neuron Fantasy hook is just one of many that can open a successful (read: frequently opened, not necessarily quality) piece on this website. Another is what I’ve done with this piece — a hyperbolized, provocative hypothetical that smooths over some genuine points with a sardonic tone. DFW once said, quoting someone else, “Irony is the song of the bird who's learned to love their cage.” Maybe I love the cage.

I begun this piece trying to figure out why these “phone bad, here’s the solution” pieces irritate me. The hypocrisy is certainly one aspect, as many of these pieces are clearly aimed at gaining algorithmic favor while demonizing algorithmic culture itself. But everyone plays the game, and if that were my real hangup, I’d be hung up with myself all the time. Really, and this happens often, I’ve found that beneath the annoyance is a sadness.

iii.

Here’s something DFW says earlier in this interview:

[America] is one enormous engine and temple of self-gratification and self-advancement. And in some ways it works very very well. In other ways, it doesn't work all that well. Because, at least for me, it seems as if there are whole other parts of me that need to worry about things larger than me that don't get nourished in that system.

The angle of these pieces, more often than not, seems to be about individual efforts towards individual gains. Use your phone less to get smarter, to get sexier, to be happier. Desire towards these things is of course natural, reasonable, and likely held by us all. But to work towards these ends alone, from a starting position of personal dissatisfaction, seems to be a comfortable, temporary distraction from the real issues at hand. Perhaps this is because the real issues with tech oligarchy and predatory algorithms, the ones that shatter our communities and rip us from our real lives, are so vast and complex that one would see it more fit to devote a decade to writing a treatise on it than a short essay. And at least the essay is easily shareable.

I often grapple with to what extent I believe the internet to be a force for disseminating genuinely valuable work. To that end, I often grapple with the kind of writing I want and am able to do on the internet. How can I write critically about a reward system that I am still hoping to reap the spoils of?

I’m not a total doomer — in many ways, the internet is a true miracle for knowledge-sharing and, with even a pinch of rigor, one can unlock decades of resources, talks, books, films, etc. But, when placed in competition with seamless algorithms, that rigor can be hard to crave. Speaking from experience.

I’m not naive enough to suggest that we all simply focus on changing the world, but I am optimistic enough to hope that we might consider it. I really enjoyed this video essay about algorithms that thoughtfully combined a social critique with actionable ideas about building a better future (for ourselves and for others).

iv.

I love this beautiful world and I know that there exists a possibility, a reality, in which we all find it easier to be connected to it. I mean this without my irony, with my full earnestness and love to every person reading this. I want to build a better world with you.

1. If any of these are real titles to real pieces published to Substack, please know that I am not speaking about and do not mean to offend any one particular writer I literally made these up in my head just now

2. A term that popped up in this fantastic video essay

3. “Foster-Wallace”? the naked “Wallace” here sounds strange but I’m going with it