Is anyone else absolutely tired of information and opinions?

I have truly had my fill of the internet.

The thought I am having now is that once I move somewhere (hopefully sooner than later), I will look at getting a house phone and a cellphone that does not have internet and this will be my new norm. I will be contactable, via internet, only when I am at home and choose to plug into it.

I recognise that I can’t quite live without internet in totality, especially since I live away from family and work remotely, so I will of course keep my computer and in all likelihood my smartphone as well. But I do not want to carry it around with me everywhere anymore. I no longer want a computer in my hands or my back pocket. It’s just too much.

I hit the end of my rope when talking with my partner the other day about buying a new mattress, only to open up the Instagram application and suddenly see adverts for mattresses in between stories and posts. This isn’t, of course, the first time this has happened. But it seems to have been a final straw for me in what patience I had left for intrusion. I felt so fully invaded and exhausted of feeling like I don’t own my own thoughts anymore and knowing that everything I do and say is recorded and logged and placed into some file somewhere titled likely with a number and not even a name. And that I neither have access to nor ownership of any of it. Even though it is mine.

I’ve always tried to be mindful of the interwebs; never quite using my real, full name anywhere online. I’ve deleted my Twitter (when it was still Twitter) and my Facebook page I don’t know how many times. I’ve tried to be mindful about what I post and stay on top of my privacy settings. But I don’t even know how much any of that matters. As I used to tell my friends who have “private” accounts–there is no privacy on the internet. It’s an illusion of privacy, much like the illusion of safety and the illusion of freedom, which “Americans” are now coming to finally see as an illusion. All it takes is for one person to make one decision, and everything we think is ours can be taken away—including our rights.

Not that we even own much anymore to begin with. We have been slowly ushered into a perpetual state of borrowing, leasing, renting, “subscribing”, and apparently that even includes to our own thoughts. We don’t own those either. They get sold to the best marketer. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Business hours no longer exist. Work is constant so long as you’re connected to the WiFi somewhere, and the cost to play a part in all of it just keeps rising with every moment, just like the global water temperature.

I think we’ve long passed the point of the benefits of the internet outweighing the negatives. Of course it’s nice to know what’s going on as a way to be ready to take action and stand up for rights and against injustice; but knowing what’s going on comes at the expense of both the will to stand up and the capacity to take action. We’ve been dumbed down by all the information and we’ve been stifled in our resistance by carefully calculated algorithms that constantly confuse and debilitate our discernment.

The political state of the world also doesn’t help.

It seems people no longer know what side of history to stand on. Most don’t even seem to realise that they are, in fact, part of history whether they pick a side or not. And that not picking a side is still picking a side. It’s almost as if adults, or at least those past a certain age, seem to believe that if they close their eyes to injustice it somehow means it doesn’t exist. I’ve written about this wilful ignorance of object permanence before, something we all indeed learn by 12 months if not as early as 4. Yet, it persists as an abstract concept to the many. For the few who may care, or want to care, they are simply too busy being busy to have any space for literally anything else. Throw a child or multiple in the mix and suddenly it’s a catastrophe.

Being a parent in the 2020s means that spare time no longer exists, including time for friends who are childless, because any perceived difference between people is just too much responsibility these days and because parenting now is so much different from parenting in any other time (hint: it’s always different, in every generation) that it is treated as some sort of new phenomenon of which most people don’t know how to do it and need copious amounts of help that they never ask for. (Hint: you’re overwhelmed because you don’t ask. Because you’ve isolated yourself. It’s not the other way around. It has always taken a village to raise a child. Bring back villages.)

This phenomenon, the narrative around it, and the overall cost of living crisis that is hitting every corner of the Earth, has led to a birthing crisis in almost every “developed” nation in the world. People can’t afford to have children. Better yet, they don’t see the point in a world that is being destroyed at a rate that we can’t sustain for much longer. A world where we all have a front-row seat to the videos of screaming parents recording the death and bombing of their babies, homes, schools, hospitals, in real-time while we do nothing. A world where the majority somehow have relegated themselves to having zero power while handing over absolute power to the very few who quite clearly do not represent them.

It’s no wonder everyone is anxious and depressed and surviving off coffee and whatever other drug keeps them going. We are indeed maladjusted to a sick world, as we should be. We are trying to accomplish things alone that humans have historically accomplished in community. We struggle to sustain alone because we were never meant to. Yet having a community is somehow just too much work.

I can assure you, though, it is not more work than doing everything alone.

And perhaps signing off is not the best way to take action against the “powers that be” but it’s my version of escaping for my own sanity. It will be my “mental health day”; my “mini-retirement”.

I am and have always been happy to be part of the resistance, to rebel and rage against the machine. But all I see when I look around are tired eyes and failing bodies. Everyone is already exhausted and the war hasn’t even begun.

I’m not sure it’s wise to fight in that kind of army.