Prelude: A (Mostly) Offline Road Trip
...did anything happen while I was gone?
You may have noticed I’ve been gone for the past month. While I had visions of pre-writing the entire series for which this post is a prelude, that didn’t happen. What did happen was a long road trip to visit beloveds old and new, an intensive writing residency (during which I thought I would casually write *more*?), and a few days quiet recovery.
Right before we left, I uninstalled Instagram from my phone. It felt so nice that I’m planning to permanently exit (again) that wretched digital sphere as soon as I can! (See my mostly un-tested how-to guide at the end of this post if you’d like to join me.)
If you know me in real life or otherwise follow me there, you know I’ve been a cryptic, infrequent poster for a while now. Perhaps you’ve been annoyed that most of what I do anymore is push you to come over here, take a seat, and join me for a little one-sided conversation. What you don’t see is my shameful habit of scrolling in the very same dopamine casino I so often lambast. And worse yet, on Instagram Reels, to which I swore I would never convert when I previously deleted TikTok.
Sometimes I tell myself this behavior is for research. The Instagram algorithm sucks more since the introduction of their AI features and I’ve been consistently pushed toward trad-wife and hippie-flavored “Divine Feminine” content. Very much not my thing! Further rage-bait followed, and I let it carry me away.
It wasn’t research, dear reader, it was just a coping mechanism for anxiety and depression all along! The novelty of traveling and the intellectual stimulation of a writing community promised dopamine, so I pulled the plug. No one online saw what I saw in real time, and I had no idea what was going on at home or in the world at large.
It didn’t exactly re-wire my brain to not have Instagram on my phone during a vacation, because I’m already not that kind of traveler. My mom always wants to see where I’ve been and I realize too late that I’ve come home with five shitty photos like this one:
Some people seem to genuinely enjoy creating an aestheticized snapshot of their travels, curating a wheel of images that tastefully capture the “adventures” and consumption of a recent trip. And that’s fine, or at least, not really any of my business. Others express a somewhat compulsory relationship to documentation, aka “doing it for the Gram,” whether or not they consciously express the compulsion. What I’d like to do instead, as an experiment, is share a brief travel snapshot with you all (including photos), as a means to reflect on the ways that pocket technology and algorithmic mediation alter the paths of our daily lives.
One problem with unplugging and letting the algorithm slide away is the design of cars built…I don’t know, some time in the past decade? I am poor and I like older cars, so any car with a giant screen in the dash feels *new* to me. The rental car we picked up in Burlington, Vermont (kind of a weird place, BTW… chime in if you also find its downtown haunting in a Truman Show kind of way) boasted a giant screen that integrated seamlessly with various mapping apps and was nearly impossible to dim or turn off.
Following the blue line—the most efficient path—to the next destination ruins the magic of a road trip, no? Thankfully, it was used sparingly and did not speak. My travel companion and I were free to deviate from the line, particularly for promising road side free piles, thrift stores, and the right kind of establishment to find the meals of our dreams.
A marvelous sandwich. Unearthed not through a star-rating system on Google Maps, nor any other hype engine, but by pulling in to the parking lots of three separate establishments, poking around inside, and giving them the good, old-fashioned vibe check. Further musings on Waze, mediated travel, GPS reliance and related to come in the full “Big Dumb Gold Rush” posts. (For a nice read on recommendations and cultural homogeneity, check out Hannah Seo’s post, “The Pyramid Scheme of Taste” on Mental Hellth.)
The sandwich, potentially, was so good because I ate it right after sitting in the sun for a long time at Bread and Puppet. We pulled up just in time for the circus, this season titled “The Beginning After The End of Humanity Circus and Pageant.” And if you don’t know Bread and Puppet Theater, and you panic at the word “circus,” you must know that it isn’t at all what you probably think. There are no clowns, but there are heroic sanitation workers with paper-mache heads who clear the grass stage after every act. No captive animals, but definitely a “turkey standing in for the role of Humanity,” played by a shockingly expressive human actor in a burlap sack. A brass band!
And, just like the sandwich, my relationship with this beautifully messy, deeply anti-capitalist troupe of freaky, devoted artists evolved offline. At one of my first anti-war demonstrations (it must have been 7 years in Iraq? 10 in Afghanistan? They blur together unendingly.), I met Jan and saw the incredible mourning women puppets she’d brought. They were towering, moving depictions, based on Bread and Puppet designs. From there, I must have ordered some “cheap art” online, designed a tattoo inspired by one of their prints, and eventually, made my way in person for the first time.
The circus was comprised of short sketches, all political: mourning the children senselessly killed in Gaza alongside those suffering in cobalt mines, celebrating the eventual victory of the workers (dancers waving flags printed with work boots) over the dead horse of capitalism (a complex puppet, a literally dying white horse), paying homage to mothers globally who must leave their children behind to work each day. I am not much of a “joiner,” but I cried, I laughed, and I sang along.
Reflecting back through this lens, considering the role of mediation and technology in our lives, it strikes me that this live, raw performance is perhaps the perfect opposite of the digital infographic. The one we’re all supposed to share to telegraph our correct level of care and engagement, and our correct political opinions. And while I’ve shared many an infographic in my time (because so often, what else feels so much at hand, and like action?), sitting on a hill with strangers crying and laughing and thinking about how the “beginning after the end” will look felt much better. Art, like the bread given at the end of each show, sustains us.
The day before the Circus, in Montreal, I received the news of the day in a typically long text message from one of my treasured elders.
“Oh, sorry I didn’t get back to you. I’m making pies and cobbler. Ok on Theresa, traveling. Yes, I remember. [big grin emoji] Trump was shot and expected to be ok. Take care and see you two next go round.”
This kind of stream of consciousness, all-in-one-message is not the way I’m accustomed to receiving breaking news. It made me reflect on how I usually receive news (social media, a news podcast the next day), and the way that the fragmentation of media systems means that we don’t all receive breaking news, or we receive it too late, distorted.
I read the message out loud to my friends and friends-friends in Montreal where we were waiting for food to-go in a crowded restaurant, confirmed that yes, this happened, and kind of just went back to waiting for our poutine.
Later in the trip, a separate septuagenarian friend sent me a similar text to break another piece of shocking political news:
Biden is not seeking re-election.
Just announced.
My husband just told me.
Friends, you can leave social media if you just have a network of elders who you maintain text communication with, ok?
I didn’t realize until I started writing that the theme of this post is “Older People Remember Other Ways of Being So You Should Talk To Them More,” but here we are. As a person no longer young, but certainly not old, I have long cherished my relationships with my elders. They teach me a lot and they remind me that other worlds are not only possible, but some people were there and can report on some of them, for better or for worse.
As you know if you read this newsletter, I am extremely covid-cautious. This makes travel, fun, and everything else more complicated, particularly during a “new-normal” summer surge. So I was anxious, yet well-prepared to be among the only masked people at a somewhat risky event, a line dance in Western Massachusetts. However, some kind folks at a singing circle in Montague (Side Note: It’s occurring to me with every stop I add to this road trip report that I am probably revealing a lot of surprising interests to this readership, and hope that you are all amused.) let us know that the better option was to Contra dance in Amherst, where masks are still required.
Music to my ears, even though I get motion sickness from Contra dancing. This was truly a model event for any organizations who want to be “inclusive,” “allies,” etc. N95s or better masks were required and provided at the door. The traditionally gendered roles of Contra had been adapted into roles anyone could adopt for themselves (Larks and Robins, very cute). Signs like the one above surrounded the room, inviting emergent norms among the intergenerational, multiply-abled, many-gendered group. I still got vertigo, but that’s on me.
And that’s the missing factor here in this high-minded post about being above all things social media, about the joys of experiencing the world more organically. It is still not safe for all people to do that in all places, and we all make calculated risks each day in our bizarre limbo reality. Online interactions and connections are still important, sometimes even life-saving, for many of us. Which is why I believe it’s so crucial to protect and/or steal back the corners of the internet we can still directly shape.
The beautiful thing about a road trip is the same thing that’s exciting and beautiful about (some remaining aspects of) the internet. Novelty around every corner, people and places you’ve never seen before, unexpected connections that illuminate your everyday reality. A pond that you’re told is full of “amphibians” (there are so many, please be more specific), but you swim in it naked anyway! Refreshing or terrifying? You decide!
I hope you enjoyed joining me on this truncated travelogue and that you’ll follow along and discuss its opposite: The Big Dumb Gold Rush (of AI, and specifically the dump of generative AI over the past ~2 years). Coming soon, in digestible chunks.
And finally…
How I* plan to quit Instagram (five step plan):
Tell everyone, a few times, a couple weeks out. Ask for DMs containing email addresses, phone numbers, snail mail.
Figure out where to migrate my beloved group chat with my three closest high school friends.
Starting with Saved Posts, look through what has been valuable to me on Instagram. Can I follow organizations and individuals elsewhere?
Scroll through every account I follow. Who would I actually miss if I didn’t see them here? Initiate contact, whether that’s subscribing to a newsletter, DMing my contact info and a note that I’m leaving, or whatever.
Change bio and links to reflect my profile as DEAD AND NULL. It will live as a ghost, an arrow pointing elsewhere to those who missed the call.
*I already have my Archive downloaded, so that’s not included. It’s easy to do if you want to keep your “content” for your own enjoyment outside IG.
Happy quitting (or not),
TRW
Also - Larks and Robin's! Makes me think you were at a Contradance that is the ones attended by a college friend who has mentioned this on fb. Funny small world.
Bread and Puppets ... dream destination
Your musings have been read and enjoyed by me for sometime. Anyone that can get me to laugh out loud is a good writer. ‘Especially liked the part about learning from your elders…if only my four children and ten grandchildren felt that way. Keep on blogging. ✌️