Will Social Media's Green Witch Spell Break?

I'm sitting on the pouf, in the dark, in my son's room, staring at my open internet browser on my laptop. It's on the home screen. And I have nowhere I want to go on the world wide web.

I don't want to go to Twitter / X and "catch up" on the world.

I don't want to look at Reddit.

I don't even want to visit Substack.

I don't want to do *anything* online.

It feels like I'm waking up. As if a fog is breaking. A glimpse of reality is shining through. I think to myself: “Is it true? There’s nothing I actually want to look at on the internet?”

When was the last time I found the internet boring? When was the last time there was nothing more I wanted to do on it?

When I was about 19 and didn’t have internet at home (or on the phone! Or even a phone!), my older brother would occasionally invite me to his office on weekends where I could sit on one of the computers there and “surf the web”. I would usually go look at bands and catch up on any new music news. I was often super excited to do this. But then, once I had caught up on music news, I would have to wait for him to finish his work, because there was nothing more I wanted to do on the internet. There was simply nothing else I was interested in.

Things rapidly changed. Once I discovered forums, I was very much hooked. Forums became social media. I remember thinking Facebook was literally a glorified forum. Since then, I can’t really remember another time when I didn’t have at least something to do or to look at on the internet.

But sitting at my screen that Saturday night, a kind of freedom was washing over me as something inside was done with social media. After a weekend of algorithms trying to hook me in hour upon hour, serving up the most inane, insane opinions with hate for the Left, hate for the Right (how many of those calling for hate are bots?), A.I., short videos… and again and again we hear of people radicalized online.

Why are we doing this?

Someone give me one good reason why I should continue to be on social media. To promote my writing? The algorithm doesn’t like me, I don’t pick a political side nor am interested in much politics. The House always wins, and it’s increasingly useless spinning that wheel.

You’ve no doubt seen similar sentiments rising up, getting louder and louder. They’ve filled me with hope. What on earth have we been doing for the last 20 years as social media took over our lives? I went and looked at my Twitter / X account on Sunday, and I joined the platform in 2009. For 16 years I have scrolled and scrolled on that platform. It was initially so exciting: people I admired would post interesting blogs and articles they found online. I remember getting super excited to see what Paul Hewson AKA Bono from U2 was going to post. I think he saw the writing on the wall early and closed his account. But here I was always ahead of the news. I could track trends and be a knowledgeable dude. But like a frog in a boiler, it slowly became something else. Something that has, realistically, added very little real value to my life.

I’ve got almost 900 followers on my Twitter / X over those 16 years, all organic followers, trying my best to build a "platform" online for my writing. It’s really meant nothing. I tried to often engage reasonably with people. I tried to learn. But that kind of thing gets you nowhere on the internet now. Unless you have significant media investment, you sure don’t build a “platform” that way—and even then you better ramp up the rhetoric.

I think now of all the time I’ve spent on Twitter and how it probably drained my energy and motivation more than gave me any. I think of all the books I could have probably gotten completed in that time. All the songs I could have written and finished recording. All the poems I might have read. All the skills I probably could have acquired. Heck, even all the good movies I could have watched—a far better use of “screen time”. All the productive things I could have done in the last 16 years instead of scrolling for probably more hours than I realized.

I want to listen to music, read magazines and books, watch a good movie, stir my imagination with beautiful art, cook with my wife, engage in discussion with people I love. I also want to go to in-person debates, be challenged in my thinking, learn and discuss ideas. This is the kind of culture I want. They promised us we could get this all online. That the world and all of culture was at our fingertips.

But all they did was lure us into an illusion with a sweet sounding song, like the Green Witch in C.S. Lewis’, The Silver Chair.

In Lewis’ telling, The Green Witch tries to put the heroes of the story under a spell by lulling them to sleep with an enchanting song coupled with sweet smells and a caring personality, so they will forget their true purpose. This is the tech world and its algorithms. What have we done, letting social media guide our culture for twenty years? So many of us have made "being online" the purpose of our lives—and the worst part is we didn't even realize it.

What has it given us? Far, far less than it ever promised.

Social media is ruining our culture. It was a great idea, I think, but the tech bros destroyed it with their manipulative algorithms, designed to coax us deeper and deeper into their cyberworld of wondrous wickedness.

How did the children break The Green Witch's spell in The Silver Chair? She lulls them with song, with sweet scents, with arguments, convinces them there was no such world as “Narnia” and they all just dreamt it up. Puddleglum, a “Marsh-Wiggle”, puts his foot in a fire. The pain wakes him up. Suddenly clarity hits him again. The sweet smells fade, replaced with the smell of his burnt foot.

“There is nothing like a good shock of pain for dissolving certain kinds of magic,” says the narrative. And the witch is revealed to them all for who she really is.

If we want a better culture, the best thing we could all do is start rejecting the algorithms. Use better platforms, if they exist (Substack’s Notes seems more of the same lately.) Get back to reading print, perhaps. Make our most heated debates in-person moments again, where we can look each other in the eye as human beings with inherent value; not devalue each as mere pixels on a screen.

I still firmly believe we can create a better future. But we need to wake up from our sleep. Maybe I’m being idealistic, as I often am, but I do think we can do better than this. And I think many, many people are realizing this. I continue to read headlines about how Gen Z is deleting social media. I want to join them. Maybe we should put our foot in the fire and just stop scrolling, regardless of the voices that tell us we “need” to be online to keep up.

Culture changes. Is there any reason to believe that Silicon Valley should continue to lead culture? Like the glam metal scene in the 80s, the excesses are now too pronounced, too obvious, and even too taxing. Perhaps the Revenge of the Nerds must finally come to an end.

That feeling of sitting on the pouf and not wanting to look at anything on the internet? I want that more in my life.

Thank you for reading my rant today :).