Thanks for your insights about one of the most frequent activities in our digital lifes.
Also I want to add my experience hoping it would resonate with yours.
I'm from Venezuela, and before the past january 3rd events I was decided to stop doomscrolling and reduce my social media use significantly. But the event was so shocking that last days I can't help it but be immersed in social media.
This resonate well with your idea of hopescrolling. The only reason that I've been compulsively checking my socials is in hopes that I will find good news that would help my country be freed from the regime. Also everyone I know was doing the same. We were expecting to find on our feeds explicit evidence of facts that we have years wishing for.
However being refreshing the feeds was futile because misinformation is also very common. And in this way the metaphor of the slot machine is very useful to understand what the people in my country were experiencing. We were obsess with hope but we were looking for it in a slot machine.
Also I want to thank you again because I'm a psychologist and I found your former work on the psychodynamics of social networking because I wanted to understand from a psychodynamic perspective everything that I've been living in this digital era. I'm young so I don't know what it meant to live without PCs, phones or social media but also I didn't know ways to comprehend my experience. So your work have been very insightful for me.
Yarfaz, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I'm very curious to hear what people are doing with regard to social media across the world in their given situations - I would love to hear from Iranians too - though it seems the regime there has effectively removed the opportunity to engage online - for harm or good - which in itself is interesting as despite its failings, it is still a threat and an opportunity for people to organise resistance.
I'm also very happy to hear that my work has been of use to you! Thanks so much for feeding that back to me, it's always good to hear.
I enjoyed this – and I completely concur that I stayed online for longer that day, and I too was looking for some sort of reflection of my overwhelming feelings – as you call it, others pushing back, not accepting what had happened, sharing my feelings.
The hope we are looking for as we scroll is, for me, an effort to move away from the fear that this sort of shooting, of an average person, on a normal street, in a US city, will be normalised.
Also, a little bit like being bereaved, there was a fear that if we don’t look, we are not properly recognising what has happened.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jo - and your extra insight is helpful, the fear of things becoming normalised - also the grief, the grief for people these things are happening to, and the grief of the loss of a country we once had.
Insightful piece. Thank you for sharing. It’s made me think a bit more carefully about the “doomscrolling” idea, and the link to repetition compulsion. I wonder what other psychic uses “doomscrolling” could have for some people. A question i’ll hold in mind clinically.
Excellent article, Aaron! So inciteful. Steve Bannon coined the term, "Muzzle Velocity," the political term of throwing out one outrageous issue after another, so that one becomes so distracted by the new disturbing revelation, the old one gets diminished or left for later. (But I do believe, and hope, that the Epstein Files will be eventually released...)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Leslie - I hadn't heard "muzzle velocity" so that's a new one for me. I also hope the files will eventually be released, but I have very little faith, sadly, that they will make a difference.
Thanks for your insights about one of the most frequent activities in our digital lifes.
Also I want to add my experience hoping it would resonate with yours.
I'm from Venezuela, and before the past january 3rd events I was decided to stop doomscrolling and reduce my social media use significantly. But the event was so shocking that last days I can't help it but be immersed in social media.
This resonate well with your idea of hopescrolling. The only reason that I've been compulsively checking my socials is in hopes that I will find good news that would help my country be freed from the regime. Also everyone I know was doing the same. We were expecting to find on our feeds explicit evidence of facts that we have years wishing for.
However being refreshing the feeds was futile because misinformation is also very common. And in this way the metaphor of the slot machine is very useful to understand what the people in my country were experiencing. We were obsess with hope but we were looking for it in a slot machine.
Also I want to thank you again because I'm a psychologist and I found your former work on the psychodynamics of social networking because I wanted to understand from a psychodynamic perspective everything that I've been living in this digital era. I'm young so I don't know what it meant to live without PCs, phones or social media but also I didn't know ways to comprehend my experience. So your work have been very insightful for me.
Yarfaz, thank you so much for sharing your thoughts. I'm very curious to hear what people are doing with regard to social media across the world in their given situations - I would love to hear from Iranians too - though it seems the regime there has effectively removed the opportunity to engage online - for harm or good - which in itself is interesting as despite its failings, it is still a threat and an opportunity for people to organise resistance.
I'm also very happy to hear that my work has been of use to you! Thanks so much for feeding that back to me, it's always good to hear.
I enjoyed this – and I completely concur that I stayed online for longer that day, and I too was looking for some sort of reflection of my overwhelming feelings – as you call it, others pushing back, not accepting what had happened, sharing my feelings.
The hope we are looking for as we scroll is, for me, an effort to move away from the fear that this sort of shooting, of an average person, on a normal street, in a US city, will be normalised.
Also, a little bit like being bereaved, there was a fear that if we don’t look, we are not properly recognising what has happened.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Jo - and your extra insight is helpful, the fear of things becoming normalised - also the grief, the grief for people these things are happening to, and the grief of the loss of a country we once had.
Insightful piece. Thank you for sharing. It’s made me think a bit more carefully about the “doomscrolling” idea, and the link to repetition compulsion. I wonder what other psychic uses “doomscrolling” could have for some people. A question i’ll hold in mind clinically.
Thanks for commenting Julian-Pascal. I'm sure there are several psychic uses yet to be explored and understood!
Excellent article, Aaron! So inciteful. Steve Bannon coined the term, "Muzzle Velocity," the political term of throwing out one outrageous issue after another, so that one becomes so distracted by the new disturbing revelation, the old one gets diminished or left for later. (But I do believe, and hope, that the Epstein Files will be eventually released...)
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Leslie - I hadn't heard "muzzle velocity" so that's a new one for me. I also hope the files will eventually be released, but I have very little faith, sadly, that they will make a difference.