But why is it, that it is so valuable to us? Why did these giants of tech land on doomscrolling?

Reason is humanity needed it since before we’ve discovered fire and listened to stories by it’s shimmering warmth. We crave to be entranced by stories and sense of connection (even if artificial and malnourishing).

But why? Why crave distraction?

Because what is underneath. What the undiluted, undistracted mind can’t help but see clearly is... death. It all comes down to death. Fear of death. Alone, cold, everlasting dark night. It’s why it’s so uncomfortable to be without the phone. To sit in silence with our thoughts. To get bored. To walk a forest with empty pockets and no watch.

So it makes perfect sense to use. To scroll and lower the friction of the mind on the tracks we are all tumbling on. There are many ways to distract, some “better” than others. Sport, work, love, media, art, sex, drugs, food. When you answer honestly enough, why you do any of these; if you do them out of need**, the need will be either distracting yourself from, or postponing, your mortality.

How surprised I was to find extreme discomfort when I dropped all my distractions, I thought I’ll be light, creative, excited to tackle any of my grand ambitions. What I met looking at me behind the curtain of my addictions was fear. Crushing really. We were addicts before doomscrolling was invented. It is the apex predator amongst the superstimulus competing for our attention and satisfying our need to take the edge off.

First step is to acknowledge this and approach doomscrolling with respect it deserves. We are outmatched and to break free requires something ridiculous. The genius of doomscrolling is the innocence of it and absolute social acceptance, even necessity in some ways. To break free you need to dissolve your sense of self.

The genius of doomscrolling might be it’s biggest flaw - it’s just too effective, my feeds are full of advice which signals desperate need and craving of a way out of this loop and need to keep desensitizing one’s self. People see what it takes away, want to get out of it, and that need is just recycled into more content that keeps them trapped because only thing more insane than wasting your life on scrolling is letting go of all identity. At least it feels this way before you do it, after that it’s pretty awesome really. Have you ever eaten an apple for the sake of eating an apple?

To sum up and make sure we are on the same page so far. Here is our current situation. We will die. Our minds can’t stand this fact directly for it’s fear inducing hence we distract ourselves with many of life pursuits. Tech giants exploit this and produce free doomscrolling that satisfies the need for free, safe, distraction in ultracompetitive way, creating modern social media which are blatantly flattening depth of life.

Now, as long as you need to distract your self from fact of your death you will use social media and doomscroll your hours away (or do any other thing for this purpose) in perfect desensitization and in effect all you do will be tainted by the motivation of escape from fear. You will never taste an apple for the sake of tasting an apple, it won’t be enough, you will never know enough for nothing can satisfy the ego insatiable need to feel safe from death.

That’s why distractions make perfect sense, you can’t feel safe when present if you fear death, you can’t be identified with anything and not fear death.

It all would be terrible and quite depressing if it wasn’t possible to see that ego is not you. There is nothing you can identify with that is true. This will feel like a brain dump but I will just lay it thick on you here. If you made it this far there is a reason for it so here you go. Each of these we could go deeper into but you are absolutely able to think on any of them and get back to me if you disagree.

What are you? You are not your thoughts and you don’t author them, they simply appear. You can’t claim certainty of free will. You are not your mind or body, you have them. You are not your functions you perform them (parent, husband, child, teacher, driver etc). You are not your nationality, you are not your gender, your political views, hobbies or any other way you could assign your identity. There is nothing you can identify with.

Yet here you are, there clearly is something like to be you. What’s left is consciousness and the last bit of mental gymnastics, which will lose most of you reading here, is that you (and everything else for that matter) are consciousness, but also the part of you that immediately tries to identify with consciousness is something that you have, not are. You can not put your finger on what you fundamentally are, but you can see that anything that ego can identify with is not it, because there is more underneath and you remain you after the ego dissolves. Words are the worst way to talk about this, but we don’t have a better way.

There is no way for me to accurately put it in words for any words are themselves approximations and only outline the truth you can see for yourself. That’s topic for another day; there are no outside authorities on this one. Maybe I am full of shit, only one way to find out. Sit in silence, take a few deep breaths and ask yourself: what am I? Maybe write it out.

I can only tell you of my experience and what it took for me to see clearly the uselessness of social media and doing anything out of fear of death. I love the elegant saying ”We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”** What I am pointing at is we all get two lives, and the second begins when we realize untruth of assumptions that allow fear of death.