“Does Anyone’s Ideal World Have Social Media?” ⇥ thebaffler.com

Lauren Oyler in the Baffler:

There’s an argument to be made about social media as a force for political mobilization — or, say, making friends, whom I may speak to multiple times a week but see only two or three times a year, if ever; research shows shared hatreds are more binding than shared interests — but first I’d like to talk a little bit more about myself. When I wake up every morning I look at my phone to see what has transpired in the night, the final waking moment of which is usually the last time I looked at my phone. This is bad for my sleep cycle, I know, and for the nerves in my hands — I refuse to get one of those knobs you can put on the back of your phone to make it easier to hold, which I see as not just admitting I have a problem but resigning myself to it, as well as broadcasting to strangers who see me using my phone in public that I am a Phone Person (worse: a Phone Woman) — but more important, it is just bad. What I dislike about my life are not the facts of it but its texture, the false tension and paranoia and twitchiness. I exist in a state of “might always be checking something,” and along with being unpleasant, it’s embarrassing.

The sentence I quoted for this link’s title comes in the last paragraph of this essay, but it’s not exactly in the context as you might expect from an essay questioning the substantive value of constant connection. It’s very good.