Command Decision
Ditching the Digital Doldrums: A Month-Long Purge of Social Media Sewage
Starting now. 1115 hours. Military time, because why complicate things with AM/PM nonsense? I’m killing all social media access. Mostly X— formerly that bird app—and Facebook. Done. Shut down. No negotiations.
Why? Simple. My mood’s tanked. I’m usually the guy charging through life, upbeat, engaged. Active. But these last months? Crap. Absolute crap. Everything else steady—work, routines, the grind. The variable? Waking up, grabbing the phone or logging on the desktop, and doomscrolling through that toxic slurry on X and Facebook.
Bullshit. All of it. Endless doom loops: outrage porn, echo chambers, manufactured crises. Zero benefit. Zilch. Interspersed with ads screaming “Make $1 Million in 10 Minutes on Your Phone!” Charlatans. Scammers. Clickbait vultures preying on the desperate and the dumb. I fucking hate it. Viscerally. It’s engineered addiction, dopamine hits laced with despair. Drains the soul. Erodes agency.
Advertisers? Go fuck yourselves. All of you. Your predatory algorithms, your data-mining manipulations—shove it. Charlatans peddling scams, baiting clicks for pennies? Double fuck you. I’m out. For the next month. Minimum. Not one second wasted on that garbage. Let’s test the hypothesis: Does my general mood rebound? Bet it does. Without the constant psychic assault.
Instead? Real life. Unfiltered. I’m heading out. Walking. Breathing actual air, not recycled outrage. Chatting up chicks—real conversations, eye contact, the spark of human connection. Calling my girlfriend up in Mukdahan province, Thailand. Genuine talk. Depth. Not surface-level likes and shares.
Writing? Hell yes. Blog posts straight from the gut. What I think. My takes on the world, unprompted by trending hashtags or viral idiocy. No need for X’s echo or Facebook’s feed to dictate my topics. I generate my own fire. Always have.
This post? Short. Deliberate. Because I’m fucking tired of the charade. Exhausted by the illusion of connection that’s really isolation in disguise. So here’s my move: Assert control. Reclaim time. Build from within.
Agency. Yours for the taking. Start today.
Update.
Twitter embed becase WordPress is a perpetual piece of shit.
WHAT IT'S ABOUT AND HOW IT WORKS
Free The Animal is an eclectic writing project about everything since November 2003. 23 years, 5,500 posts, 5 million words.
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Thanks for this, Richard. Everyone is always trying to sell something, whether it is friends, influencers, advertisers, politicians, etc. It is exhausting. Gonna log off and go hit my beach right now.
Hi Richard, I saw your X video where you lament your poor mood. Like you I quit drinking after many years of “too much, too often” and also similar to you started again (after about a year). I noticed pretty straight away that alcohol was having a downright ‘depressant’ effect on my outlook. Quit drinking again and after a few months the unwarranted anger/anxiety lifted. When you started that X video I thought you were going to say something similar. Kind regards!