Chapter 23 - Writer’s Notebook: Some Thoughts on a Media Diet
Cut down on all media comsumption
Media Diet: Cut down on all media comsumption including adverts, TV, internet, gaming, film, books and audio.
Tower of Babble: The internet is filled with inane chatter. Unplug from the incessant drone of celebrity-culture and inane, irrelevant bullshit.
Go off-the-grid: Pull the plug. Switch off notifications on your phone, computer, email, carrier pigeon. Unsubscribe from newsletters. Turn off your phone or let it go to voicemail. Disappear.
Turn off the news: The news and media are all staged, wherever possible, even if they aren’t — how many times should you listen to the same handful of stories repeated over and over again?
Turn off the TV: Who’s having a better time? The characters in your favourite show. The actors getting paid to play those characters. Or you sat watching those characters instead of living your own actual life?
Antisocial Media: Social media feeds into our innate biological narcissism. People online aren’t your friends — even if you know them in real life — they’re just avatars for those people. Friendship doesn’t scale online. You can’t have more than a hundred friends without those relationships becoming fake, distant or overwhelming.
Let go: You can live without cat pictures. You can live without most inputs and distractions. You may miss out but you won’t miss much. It’s a river of shit — and as a wise buddhist monk once said, you can’t jump into the same river of shit twice.
Connect online, create offline: When you produce content yourself, limit access to the real you. Keep the door shut until you’re done.
The only relationship you need to cultivate is with your muse: This doesn’t mean ignore your immediate intimates (family, loved ones, friends and pets) — just connect to the muse part of your brain. If you obsess about your characters and stories, instead of celebrities, then you win. Stalk your characters instead.