Jan 22
The Zen of Twitter
Be master of mind rather than being mastered by mind
Recently, I returned to Twitter as I felt the need for a microblogging account, for some specific purposes. Planning to keep it “business only”, I “minimal use” policy: I’ll post my content, but not engage in any other activity, or check general content.
Social media however is geared for engagement. Trying to not engage is difficult; futile even. Eventually, I found myself engaging with general content. Here, I encountered the mighty “algorithm” and this started my journey towards zen.
The Adversary
Freedom of thought is something that I hold dear. It is crucial for society to function and progress. I created my Twitter account just days before Elon Musk’s takeover. Things changed considerably since —and for the better. The platform went from being an arbitrarily censored echo-chamber to one with greater transparency. Freedom of thought was revived.
Musk’s updates on upcoming improvements gave it the feel of a product that is being worked on once again. That the updates were coming directly from the owner, further improved customer experience and confidence.
Believing in freedom of thought, I wanted to keep everything as vanilla as possible. I did not want to be restricted into an algorithm-driven warped reality where my past actions determine what I will see in the future.
I thought that on Twitter, if I did not follow anyone, I’d be able to see a vanilla feed. I was wrong. The feed evidently takes from replies, likes and who knows what else.
A vanilla feed is nigh on impossible. The algorithm has to be engaged. For general users, the algorithm is a great friend. For those seeking vanilla feeds, it can be somewhat adversarial.
Zen: a state of calm attentiveness in which one’s actions are guided by intuition rather than by conscious effort. Merriam-Webster Dictionary
The Battle
So here I was on Twitter, pitted against the algorithm. Every action I did, only led me deeper into the arms of the recommendation algorithm.
If I liked something, I was shown more of that. I realized this quickly but also remembered my values — freedom of thought and vanilla feed, so I see the full picture and not the one the algorithm determines based on my actions. I made a conscious effort to “like” less things, because I did not want to see just those topics, sentiments and handles.
The issue became when I disliked something. I’m not a big social media poster but a couple of tweets got me worked up. I responded to them. Then, to my surprise, I got shown more from those accounts!
Coincidentally, the same day I saw this tweet from Elon Musk:
This caused me to introspect.
I value freedom of thought. I like to see other perspectives, even if different from my own, even if I disagree with them and even if I don’t believe them.
Freedom of thought requires various perspectives be surfaced. The new Twitter is doing that at a platform level. At the user level however, the recommendation algorithm starts to weave its own world.
I did not want to use the “show less of” type features, because a) that made my feed less vanilla and b) I had no way of undoing the “show less of” to return to a vanilla feed later, without resetting my account.
To escape the algorithm, and keep the feed as vanilla as possible, I had to engage less with things I liked, and less with things I disliked.
“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” — Rumi
The Acceptance
To have a vanilla Twitter experience, I had two options. One was to periodically reset my account, which was impractical. The other was to engage less. I could still view content but just engage (like/reply etc) less.
I accepted the second option. It was hard, especially for content that worked me up. It was hard to not reply. But when I remembered that a reply would only show more of the same, and found the strength to resist.
Conditioned by how I understood the algorithm, and still striving for a vanilla feed, I adopted a new strategy. My default action would be to view and move on. I engaged sparingly. For most part, I became an observer.
With this a new journey began for me.
For the things I liked, I did not over-indulge.
For things I did not like, I did not over-react.
I started to accept that there is a spectrum of opinions, posts and sentiments out there. I don’t need to agree with everyone, or react to everything. It’s social media. Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. Eventually, I started to value this diversity of thought more than the thoughts itself.
I was attentive, yet calm.
“Zen teaches nothing. It merely enables us to wake up and become aware. It does not teach. It points.” — Daisetsu Teitaro Suzuki
Social media is like a marketplace. In a market, a wide range of merchants present and sell a wide range of wares to a wide range of customers who have a wide range of budgets and tastes. Despite all this sensory noise, when visiting a market, we can, intuitively, focus and un-focus as required.
It’s not surprising then, that digital zen journey started amidst the noise of social media. Perhaps this sensory overload, cacophony, and freedom of thought on Elon Musk’s Twitter, was the essential catalyst for making my zen journey possible.
As Musk himself might quip: “not actually wrong lol”.
