I’m always on the hunt for information. All kinds of it, 24/7. This terrible urge to know stuff, and that’s all it is: ephemeral knowledge, hunts me. (Even when I wake up in the middle of the night I’ll check my phone and then go back to sleep -- the compulsion is too great!) Fortunate for me, mass media pumps endless news into the world, and as soon as it goes public, I go after it. It’s an itch I can never really satisfy. I’ll always want--sorry, need more. I’m a boldface junkie who can’t go too long without his fix. It’s frightening how my perpetual craving for information controls my person. That is, even a few days without mass media, life becomes blasphemously hollow, but then incredibly fulfilling. Sadly, from the moment the assignment began, I set myself up to fail.
Early into the winter quarter, my COM 150 professor assigned my class to go five days without any mass media. Deprive yourselves of mass media, he said. “No,” I whispered in class. Simply, but strongly enough, no. I can’t, I thought. That's not how life works. That’s not how my life works.
I started being desperate and thinking of useless excuses. Well, I don’t have to start today, I told myself. That caught me off guard. I have to mentally prepare myself, and then I'll begin this mental abuse -- because that’s what it is: an abuse. Today doesn't count, so tomorrow, yes. I'll be ready. Definitely.
I knew I’d never be ready. While the professor continued to explain the project, I could only think about the next few days--and just how difficult even walking would become. For a moment, I felt disgusted at myself. It brought me shame to realize that my life depended on a media fixation.
I’m more than that, I told myself. At least, let me see how far I can go.
By that time, lecture was over, and as I left the classroom, feeling uneasy and tense, I put on a brave face. Really, that's all I could do. I knew this would be the hardest task given to me. Why the hardest? I’m an abuser of mass media. To illustrate, I declare the following: at any given time, I’m wearing my earbuds. They are, pretty much, stuck to my skull, releasing all types of mass communications into my ears, all day every day. My headphones give me songs, podcasts, movies, TV shows, movies, YouTube videos, breaking news coverage, everything humans have to offer. I walk with them. I do homework with them. I ride on the train with them. I talk to my friends with them. I fall asleep with them.
I live with them.
I deliberately block out the people around me, but engage with those whose voices and faces I only hear and see through a screen. The real world is bland to me, and even if mass media is derivative of the real world, I prefer the digital world so much more. Media broadcasting takes me places I dream of going. It lets me hear the things I want to hear. It shows me content that captivates me. Mass Media is the window to my ideal world -- the world that solely exists to satisfy me.
It’s for this reason that I update Instagram; that I check up on various blogs; that I watch movies; that I listen to music and podcasts; that I read books. I commit all of these actions to feel both entertained and whole. This consumption of media has become my life in itself. Not the easiest of lives, I should add. But it makes me happy.
A few hours after leaving the classroom, my life began to hurt. Intensely. A strange, shallow sensation overcame my mind. Within a few minutes, I suffered from an actual headache from the lack of music drowning out the world’s noise. I sensed this “forever empty” feeling creeping up on me. I felt disconnected from humans -- I mean those I experience through the web of a screen: the grandeur musicians, actors, and news anchors who enlightened me on the daily. Heck, I even started missing commercials.
I walked directly to my dorm room (the longest walk of my life). For the first time I can remember, I placed my headphones on my table and sat next to my dorm window. I gazed at Center City, cars passing by, people walking, airplanes flying --and felt nothing.
What’s wrong with me? I asked myself. I feel so... idle.
I sat there for a few hours, solely me and my thoughts. Every minute that passed I considered a small victory; a triumph that proves to me that the real world is good enough for my attention. Or at least that’s what I tried to convince myself of. “This will do,” I said out loud. I went to sleep at 10 p.m., as oppose to 1 a.m. (like every other day.) I wanted to tell myself I survived day one. And I did.
The second day, I became psychologically distressed. I would scroll through my music library out of need. My finger would hover above the YouTube app, the Instagram app, the Netflix app--merely to feel somehow in control of my emptiness. By early afternoon, I started thinking of all the pictures, weather updates, some tragic news happening somewhere in the world, or viral sensation I was missing out on. Whilst walking to and from classes, and having meals, even sitting in a lounge, I went through multiple episodes of absolute boredom. There was nothing to do with my life--my world. I felt so empty, the entire human experience seemed as useless as my iPhone and computer.
In the evening, I went with some friends to get dinner. We were sitting in Urban, eating some food, when suddenly, I noticed something that I hadn’t paid much attention to for months: the TVs. In every wall of the dining area, there are different televisions playing from CNN to the Weather Channel to MTV.
“Ah,” I thought. “I guess we need the background noise while we eat.”
We continued eating when a friend sitting in front of me shouted, “Oh my god! I gotta show you something!” She whipped out her phone and went straight to the YouTube app.
“Woah! I can’t watch that, remember!?” I reminded her.
“Oh yeah….sucks to be you,” she responded with grief.
She was right. It sucked to be me; I was missing out on something so ubiquitous. Now that I’m forced to disregard it, I understood that mass media integrated itself so finely into our society. I worked to ignore it. To escape it completely I somehow disconnected from humanity. And as a college student, pulling it off would take time and effort. But somehow I managed to do it.
I went back to my room, feeling more at peace with myself. I felt profound! Here I am unplugging from the masses, freeing myself from a shameful addiction. I even went on my phone and erased all my media apps. The best part? I regret nothing. It took a measly two days to detox myself, and for the first time since the assignment began, I gained a sense of purpose. It was a greater motive than before. I found myself, once again, sitting next to my dorm-room window, overlooking Center City, its inhabitants, thoughtful of everything that existed before me.
“This will do,” I said out loud.
I lost all reasons to delve into the so called digital world. My longing to know stuff had subsided, and I experienced serenity. My chronic anxiety to check up on my phone for new information had no power over me. It was amazing.
Day three came about, and I still felt differently better. My mind began to declutter even more. I focused only on what stood before me. I cared for the people around me. I craved to socialize with others, and for the first time (there were a lot of “first time”s during the assignment), I began to talk more in my classes. I became interested in strangers. The real world became my priority. Unfortunately, deep down, I knew it wouldn’t last.
Day four: it all crashed. The entire day had been fine, but in the early evening, I got into a big argument with a close friend. My defense mechanism kicked in right after the dispute, and I left the room and walked over to a coffee shop. Without reason, I bought some coffee-latte thing (it tasted awful) and sat alone in a table. After a couple of minutes of mopping, analyzing the situation over and over again in my head, I came to realize something: there was music playing in the background. I stopped thinking of everything and allowed the music to fill me. The song was, “Guess I’m Doing Fine,” by musician Beck and -- Jesus, what a beautiful moment that was. I felt so emotionally overwhelmed, not just by my recent conflict, but by the fact that I was listening to that song that tears began to fall from my eyes. I cried. All The emotions rushed in at once.
Was I breaking down? Probably. The song gave me so much hope. It reminded me that everyone in this planet -- every single human being in the universe -- at some point, has felt incredibly sad, like I did in that moment. But we’re all sad together. Beck wrote the song to connect to his audience, and Starbucks helped him out by broadcasting it to its customers, including me. I always try my hardest to block the real world out--to disallow strangers and inconvenient situations from entering my life. Which is why I forced mass media to serve me as a barrier between the undesirable and the digital good. When the real world becomes too much, and I refuse to be dragged down, my music, my TV shows, my books, my Instagram -- all my media comes to the rescue, to give me the hope I need.
I really wanted to last the whole five days. But I guess life and its implications got in the way of that. Time passed since the assignment ended, but I kept some aspects of my new lifestyle (I like calling it that because my way of living changed indeterminately). I still keep Youtube and Instagram in a folder called “Extras,” and I rarely use them. I stopped listening to music while I walk. Sometimes, I forget my headphones in my dorm room entirely. I feel cleaner now. I don’t drown myself in mass media anymore. I simply don’t have a reason to any longer.