Anonymous, Beyond the Screen, the Stars

• "Social pressures to have a smartphone, to be connected and reachable at all moments, push us into an ultimatum: adapt or be left behind. ... How do we want to connect with the people we care about? With strangers? What type of relationships do we want to nurture? These considerations are paved right over with fear and threats – you’ll lose all connection, you’ll lose touch with what’s going on, you’ll become irrelevant – a parasitic and relational blackmail. We are denied even the dignified option of solitude, which in the digital world is rewritten as isolation, loneliness, depression, irrelevance."
• "Their words also raise the problem of the faultlines formed between those who refuse this enclosure on an individual level, possibly along with their close comrades, and those who are ensnared — who maybe have never lived without a smartphone, were given ipads as babies, have always had to swallow the feelings of heartbreak and rejection when their loved ones pull out their phones instead of looking them in the eye."
• "Constantly sharpening hostility towards the digital cage is a valuable and necessary process, and can also be an important gift for all those whose hostility is buried under the anxiety and fear nurtured by smartphone society. The timid approaches that accept the eternal ubiquity of smartphones, likely out of a desire to avoid alienating all those enmeshed in digital networks, are not only weak, they are ineffective and insulting in that they underestimate others’ desire to escape the trap they are stuck in."
• "We need to learn that this avoidance isn’t actually easier, as it destroys our relational skills, our ability to confront each other when necessary and to maintain trust and respect throughout conflict. This is a simple example that illustrates the importance of a deeper shared commitment to re-learning, or learning for the first time, how to escape the net. If we can’t share this commitment, what are our relations based on? I don’t want to know about the weather forecast from the app; I’ll bring a map so you can leave your phone; Can we just ponder this question together for a moment instead of running straight to google? — all of these interventions may be small, but if consistent and mutual, such little challenges ... can open up space for connection that we didn’t even realize was stolen from us."

Roopa Vasudevan, The Creative Independent, 5/30/2026

• Try to introduce some friction into your relationship with technology. It’s okay if the webpage doesn’t load right away. It’s okay if things don’t give you that instant gratification, because that often offers an opportunity to reflect on why you get so frustrated and what your emotional response to technology tells you about the ways you expect these systems to function in your everyday life.
• We really have to take stock of where we are internally, where we are connected to the things we don’t want to be a part of, and how we might utilize those connections in service of where we want to be in the future.

Personal observations abt sharing work on Wordpress, 5/30/2026

• feels depletinggggg to put things out there and have like, nothing come out of it? by "nothing" I guess I mean traditional internet markers of success (likes, comments, etc)
• do things have to be totally polished before sharing? clearly not
• what if I just put things on here with no expectation of how they'll be perceived?
• an "introverted" way of sharing--comments turned OFF
• updated 6/4/2026: this seems to be heavily related to the framework of internet/technology addiction as an attachment problem, Off the Grid, 🧶 Attachment Theory Explains Everything — Social Media & AI Addiction with Shannon Algeo

Kening Zhu, make the work, share the work, 5/30/2026

• Because especially when you're figuring it out as you go, the path feels long, winding, futile, and no one is cheering you on or telling you you're doing a good job or doing the right thing, keep going. You have to be the voice in your own ear, keeping you devoted to the path day in, day out, even when it feels really hard and you don't know where the path actually goes, if it really goes there to your dreams or not.
• sharing is allowing the work you do to take up space
• It's about releasing attachment to what happens when I open my palm and let this butterfly or this bird that I spent so many years creating from my heart, let it fly away from me into the world where it could be judged, it could be criticized. I have no control over that.
• Sharing is about releasing attachment to what happens after I let it go. And the process and the mechanics of sharing something is really about making that movement, finishing a work, packaging the work, putting it on a place where you feel safe, hitting publish, releasing attachment. That movement from inner world to outer world feel as effortless and useful as possible.

Kening Zhu, See Yoo, 5/29/2026

• "To me, being quietly public means to share on the internet as if you're just alone in a room, thinking of making something for yourself. Which, often times, is what you're physically doing.
• The internet is also just a room. The fact that people can see you doesn't need to change anything--it only changes how your mind and nervous system feels about it.
• Despite what social platforms have trained us to expect, most of the time, when you share something, nothing happens--at least, not immediately. This can feel like panic, or it can feel peaceful. Silence can feel like an extension of your body existing, being, breathing in this room. The work is embracing this quietness, and maybe, listening to it."

Carl Erik Fisher, It's Been a Minute interview, 2/25/2026

• Addictive behaviors make sense (in terms of serving an unmet need for someone)
• "Frictionlessness"
• "What use is this serving for me, and what solution might be more healing?"
• Addiction as "diminished control"

Personal observations abt posting on Tumblr again, 4/19/2026

• Sickly, anticipatory feelings of posting and then thinking about and ruminating on responses
• The total letdown of seeing nothing meaningful, just some likes (and no replies)
• Also an (unrelated??) self-pity post from D****

can't remember where I read this (Devon Price maybe?), 1/20/2026

• "cognitohazard"