The Great Un-Plug
Or, how to get off social media when you are needed most
In the 1999 film “The Matrix”, after a series of awakening events the main protagonist Neo becomes unplugged from the Matrix, a huge factory machine that keeps humans in a VR fake-life dream state while using up their bio energy as batteries to fuel the robot empire’s longevity. This is, rightly so, a metaphor I have seen people use as they delete various social media apps, as Meta has taken a more obvious, and public, turn to the fascist right days before the beginning of another Trump presidency. I want to investigate that further for a second though: when Neo “unplugs” from his VR pacifier to be dumped into the nightmare of reality and face how things really are, he is rescued on the other end, welcomed, healed, and given new directive on how to be a part of this new way of living. The Matrix is, of course, a retelling of Jesus and centers Neo as “The Chosen One”, but it is not a story of rugged individualism, he does not do it all alone: in fact he is a bit of a lost babe for most of the movie, surrounded by much more established and experienced members of the team who are veterans of living in this Nightmare World Where Things Suck And We Are Trying To Make It Better.
Ok, off of the Matrix review because the intro of this essay is over. People are leaving Meta (mostly FB and IG) because of its “new” policies (let’s be real, these apps have always been terribly right wing tenants of infrastructure) because they don’t feel safe there, or don’t want to give money to them, or want to find their news and connection somewhere else. These are all 100% true and real feelings, and I applaud anything for taking new direction in how they connect. I myself have been trying to get off those apps more and more over 2024, even though it is basically how musicians are supposed to connect.
However, I find the timing odd on how all of this is going down. All within the same time frame: Tik Tok gets “banned”, then gets “unbanned” but possibly still terrible under new leadership, and people are moved to mass leave Instagram and Facebook because of sudden, drastic public policy changes, all right before Inaguration Day: which aso happens to be the biggest week in organizing for mutual aid groups, activist groups, and direct action groups. These social media apps are basically how organizing has been happening for years. Which, yes, there are problems to that. It is maybe not how organizing has been happening: a lot has been done over signal. But it is certainly how RECRUITING happens.
So if you want to get off these apps, here are some tips on how to do it. They are not THE BEST ways to do it, just suggestions from someone who both A) wants like hell not to be on social media and B) has worked in volunteer recruitment and coordination.
Do not fall into Urgency: If you feel a knee jerk move to leave a social media, you don’t need to do it exactly when a meme tells you to. Make a schedule. Set a date. Give yourself time to gather your things before your leave.
Set a timeline with goals: what do you currently get out of social media that you won’t have access to anymore? Do you like finding new music? Do you like finding ways to volunteer to help manifest a better world? Look for those things on instagram and see if they have newsletters or other ways of getting involved. Now is a great time to go even further and find ones you aren’t already following and sign up for them.
Don’t Just Recreate, Redesign: it can be tempting to just recreate the experience of Instagram and Twitter with BlueSky and whatever else there is, but you are then just starting the same process over. Every app is a company, and every company has the capacity to be bought by people with money, and people with money are more likely to be Trump and Elon than they are likely to be the cool person down the street with similar values. Look for ways that you can use the internet to have real connection with people instead of a constant feed of information. Newsletters, email chains, and message boards are great for this.
Make A List Of Things You Like: Our minds have been melted into an addiction to the pigs feed, that if we like something we put it onto the conveyor belt and it comes to us without any effort on our part. When this happens and we let the conveyor belt be designed by other people, we are putting great trust in the mechanics of the factory to keep on giving us what we want and like. Whether it is Instagram or Bluesky, it is still a conveyor belt. Make a list of websites of bands and mutual aid groups and news that you want to be a part of your life, and just check them once a week or month. Take ownership of how you not just receive information, but go find it.
As you do this, start thinking about how you are going to find new things to get involved in now that you are no longer “Plugged In”. What does your research look like? Are you driven more towards local, in real life outreach for yourself, or do you want to get into granular weird corners of the internet to find out what you need?
Once your self designed timeline has its alarm clock go off: it’s time to unplug! Take time to download whatever content you want, and then delete your apps and get off em! Congrats! Hooray!
CHECK YOUR FUCKING EMAIL!!!! Nobody checks their email anymore because we are all so used to instagram, but that is one of the best ways for people to keep in touch with you when you sign up for their information.
On the other end of things, artists, activists, and mutual aid groups also need to do a better job of making their information available outside of these social media algorithms. Every mutual aid group should have a website with a calendar and their events listed, as well as regular onboarding days for new volunteers. We should all be collecting email address from folks who want to volunteer with us, and then sending out regular updates via newsletter.
But wait! Ruune! That is so much work and I am just one person!
This is another effect that social media has had on volunteering: back to the review of the Matrix earlier:
“The Matrix is, of course, a retelling of Jesus and centers Neo as “The Chosen One”, but it is not a story of rugged individualism, he does not do it all alone”
Social Media has added to the story of the American Individualism and that someone is capable of creating great change all by themselves. Instagram has made it possible for a single person to have great ideas, post about it, and gather a following, but this has also cleared the way for burn out, poor planning, and mismanagement of those great ideas because we are not gathering the proper teams of folks around us to do the admin work.
Mutual Aid Groups should have folks who are helping to facility volunteer onboarding, to create graphics for flyers to spread information, to write newsletters and get them out to interested people to keep them engaged, to fundraise from different sectors to keep the gears turning, and more. You need at least 3-6 people to do all of these things at a sustainable pace. Most importantly, we who have ended up in leadership positions need those folks around us also so that we can be suggested that maybe something is a bad idea! Working in a vacuum (whether in art or activism) is never a good idea. Instagram and Twitter have taught us that we as solo members of society can gain traction and cause movements to happen all by ourselves with one single account, and that is just not how it works in the world, and possibly just one of many reasons why many groups and movements have petered out over the past 4 years.
Social Media, regardless of who runs it, also keeps people centered on things they already like without seeking out new information. As a musician, I see other performers talking about how bars should bare the responsibility of bringing in audiences for live music. But how many of us are actually going out to venues to see bands we don’t already know? How many of us are checking venue websites (when they have them) to see who is playing a show, check out their music, and go to a random music event to see some new music? How could we expect anyone to put us in front of an audience of people we don’t know when we are not willing to be the audience other bands don’t know to begin with?
Back to Mutual Aid Activism: in 2024, I did a poll (which is small sample size, no scientific backing, means nothing but I think as also telling) about what people were doing to try to make the world a better place. I got 100 replies, and of those 100, only 5 actually involved actual volunteering, and of those 5 only 1 actually involved plugging into a weekly volunteer role that involved a group doing larger work. Most of the answers were like “I am playing music to raise awareness” or “I am checking in with my friends to make sure they are ok” or “I played a benefit show”. Out of 100 responses, only 1 response involved doing work that was outside of ones immediate friend group and plugging into a bigger network of real life folks doing on the ground work helping people who are suffering. This is also an effect of social media, it makes us stick to who we know: because that is who is showing up on our feed, who we are being reminded of. We are brainwashed to keep to inner circles instead of branching outwards and talking to folks we wouldn’t normally talk to and getting involved with groups who are doing good work on a regular basis.
So yeah, thesis statement: social media sucks! Let’s get off of it! We don’t need to recreate it! We can redesign how we receive information! Hell we don’t even need to receive it, we can go get it! Or Both! The world often requires both.
But if we are going to unplug from the current system we also need to make sure we are ready to roll on the other side, because now is not the time to be starting from scratch either. While a lot of the country was suffering over the past few years, a bunch of the country was on vacation and now are just waking up. Regardless of who is president, everyone is figuring out there is work to do to take down the systems that hurt people all around us. Right now doesn’t feel like the time to be knee jerk deleting our way of communicating with each other, but instead thoughtfully creating new ones and unhooking when the time is right.
Hope to see you on the other side!
(I do lots of other music and art, you can subscribe to this newsletter or see it on my website!)
Wow! An article with reasonable and actionable steps to take mixed with a pointed and realistic point of view?? In this Information Age???
I appreciate the point of finding ways that things exist outside of social media. My hope is that as we move away from social media and into stuff like newsletters and websites we will be able to relinquish the need to check stories for what is going on.
Wonderful! I always thought that individualism in regard to social media was a very big problem. There’s this often unspoken conception that sharing infographics on your story equates to activism or “doing something”, which to me always felt more like individuals self soothing rather than doing any kind of actual hard work to organize out in the real world.
I like your emphasis on the actual work it takes to organize community when unplugging. Thanks for giving voice to it.