Social Media ISN’T Real Life! Be Your Full Authentic Jewish Self!

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Hi.

Did you miss me?

I missed you too, but I gotta be honest, guys.

I did not miss having to weigh in on all the stupid shit happening all the time.

In fact, even as the anti-Jewish propaganda has settled into a new

level of acceptance and normalization on both the left and right, I had a

wonderful summer, and that dichotomy is what I want to talk about today.

The best kernels of wisdom are simple truths that the gauntlet of life's bull

crap has pummeled us into forgetting.

So here's my attempt at Simple Truth.

Most of us today experience life on two planes, life as we perceive it to be via

the media and real life, which involves the people, places, and things with whom

we directly engage on a daily basis.

We have forgotten this dichotomy.

We have forgotten that each of us gets to decide how we wish to engage with

the world of media communications, cable news, social media, and the normalized

behaviors society has calcified around them are not God given natural elements.

They are not air or water.

In fact, you could and would live a happier, healthier life

if you never opened a phone or turned on a television again.

Like all of you, I'm on 6,000 WhatsApp groups and on one, somebody sent the

story about the 4,000 as Hatts, sorry.

Actors boycotting the Israeli film industry in their misguided attempt to

stick it to the government by targeting society's most liberal creative artists.

But I digress.

The person who sent it said, reading articles like this makes me sad.

To which I replied, I don't mean to sound glib, but I have an easy fix for you.

Don't read the articles.

Social media is a tool, which means we have the ability to

decide how it should be utilized.

There's no law that says when something newsworthy occurs, we all have to consume

an encyclopedia's worth of tweets, posts, interviews and articles about

it, or compose and distribute our own.

Remember encyclopedias, look.

I too am guilty of this behavior at times.

We all are.

It's social inertia.

We get unconsciously swept along the current of society's flow and adopt the

normalized behavior of those around us.

In the case of modern communications, that means endlessly we scroll and click and

absorb in ways that lead not to action, but test stasis, malaise and depression.

So how do we break this self-inflicted addiction?

We start with recognizing what we're dealing with.

We remind ourselves that first and foremost social media platforms

and news outlets are businesses.

They are not guileless public services, though they are often presented as

such, and perhaps for a time were, but the role of most news media in the

21st century is not to deliver you un hierarchical objective facts through an

unbiased lens so that you can be best informed on the goings on of our species.

The job of the news with a few notable exceptions is to earn your

eyeballs and sell them to advertisers.

We have to understand what a tool is built to do before we understand

the best way to use it or not.

Here's a question.

Do you know what happens to the world when you stop paying attention to it?

Nothing.

Nothing happens.

The world goes on.

Your life goes on, and usually more happily.

Knowing that the world will keep spinning, whether you read 20

articles or two is a great example of the truth will set you free.

Most importantly, being aware of how you engage with social

media is a grounding yourself.

In reality thing, life is not what you see on the news.

Remember, we're talking about strategically designed models built to

capture and sell your attention, and the best way to do that is to rage and fear.

The scarier or angrier something makes you, the more likely

you are to engage with it.

So the machine shoves inflammatory, terrifying things in your face

to manipulate you into engaging.

That is what social media is designed to accomplish.

It's not a feature, it's the product upset you, capture, you sell you.

And as a result of this algorithm, you are consistently shown a version of

the world that does not match reality.

The news has been doing this forever, right?

If it bleeds, it leads.

We know the news gives violent crime, much more weight than real life data supports.

Social media is the same and we know this, yet we allow ourselves

to forget and play their game don't.

Furthermore, there is not necessarily a correlation between the volume of what you

see on social and its real world impact.

You and I might have completely opposite algorithms that show us

completely opposite realities.

While your echo chamber may be exploding over a story, the rest of

the world might have no idea that what you're talking about is even a thing.

The entire world does not hate Jews just because it looks that way on Instagram.

Hell, almost 50% of Americans don't even have an Instagram.

Being informed versus being ignorant is one thing, but there's no rule that says.

Being informed means you have to be inundated with muck and let yourself

become emotionally dysregulated to the point of depression.

If you go through your day and your work's good, your friends are

good, your health is good, your family's good, your life is good.

Don't let monetarily motivated distortions of reality, take that away from you.

If the only way you'd ever know something happened is because

you sought online or in the news, that event is not your real life.

Think about all the horrible things that happen to people all over planet

Earth, every moment of every day.

We already set boundaries for ourselves about how much of that we're willing

to point our gaze at, and how much of that we're able to emotionally let in.

So set more boundaries.

Be intentional.

Don't get sucked in.

Don't doom scroll.

It's a tool.

If you're using social or the news to gather information, gather it, then leave.

Once, you know, go protect your energy and remember haters, they gonna hate.

We know they exist.

We know they're getting more comfortable.

We know it's getting worse.

You don't need to hit yourself on the head with that day

after day for no material gain.

We know what's out there.

We know the work we all have to do to combat it.

If the work is exhausting, so be it.

It's necessary.

But to be exhausted by just the consumption of the narrative

itself is like scoring an own goal.

You're making the hater's job easy, so enough with the social

media, self-flagellation.

But if you're gonna watch something, at least look for content

that's trying to be uplifting, curious, nuanced and insightful.

Wonder where we might find a show like that.

This is the 41st episode of being Jewish with me, Jonah Platt.