Defeating the Misery Machine

what social media is doing to us, part 4

Photo by Alec Favale on Unsplash

Part IV: Seeing Clearly — Even Briefly

In the first essay — Unified Theory of Networked Narcissism — I argued that social media makes us into the worst versions of ourselves through a powerful trifecta that is rocket-boosted by anonymity: psychological fragmentation, algorithmic reinforcement, and emotional whiplash. I illuminated how these platforms do not merely mirror our flaws but deliberately nurture them. They don't just tempt our worst instincts — they train them.

Then, in three subsequent essays, I went deeper.

In Part I: Shards of the Self, I examined the psychological fragmentation that happens not just to vulnerable-due-to-a-trauma-history people like me, but to anyone whose sense of identity is split between real life and performance — which is everyone on social media, whether they realize it or not, and the more time spent/followers gained, the worse it gets. I explored what happens when we start treating people as issues and issues as people — and how we lose complexity, mercy, and nuance in the process.

In Part II: Fragments in the Machine, I pulled back the curtain on the algorithm itself — not as a neutral mechanism, but as a profit-driven trainer that rewards the most reactive, reductive, performative versions of ourselves. I wrote about what happens when identity fuses with persona, when affect overtakes principle, and when performance becomes a self.

In Part III: Whiplash, Withdrawal, and the Permanent Brace for Impact, I turned to the architecture of emotional chaos — the rapid shifts between horror and delight, grief and absurdity, violence and cuteness — and what those shifts do to our nervous systems. I argued that emotional whiplash isn’t just a side effect of these platforms. It’s the fuel.

This essay — Part IV — is not a solution.

I haven’t reclaimed wholeness for myself. I’m not here to teach you how to do it. What I can do, though, is tell you what I’ve noticed. What I’ve tried. What I’ve changed. And maybe, more importantly, what I’ve stopped doing.

This is about the flickers of clarity that sometimes show up when the noise dies down. The moments of stillness that follow a break — if you’re lucky, or desperate, or stubborn enough to make one.

It’s not a roadmap. It’s a collection of glimpses.

For sometimes, fleeting glimpses are the only light we’re granted.

And sometimes — if we pay attention — they’re enough to start walking a different way.

But before I show you what those glimpses revealed, we need to understand why the pull is so strong — why the machine keeps winning.

The Scarcity Brain: Why the Machine Keeps Winning

In Scarcity Brain, an excellent book I read in a single sitting and will review more fully another time, Michael Easter describes a behavioral engine so primal and persistent that it governs everything from slot machines to binge-eating to social media addiction.

He calls it the “scarcity loop” — a cycle powered by three ingredients: opportunity, unpredictability, and quick repeatability. Once we’re in the loop, we chase outcomes not because they’re good or meaningful, but because we might win. Because we might not. Because we can try again in half a second.

That’s the exact architecture behind every major social platform.

We open an app because there might be something new — a notification, a flattering reply, a post that outrages us in exactly the way we enjoy. That’s the opportunity. We scroll and tap and wait, not knowing when or if we’ll be rewarded — that’s the unpredictability. And when the dopamine hit comes, it’s immediate. So is the next chance to chase it. That’s quick repeatability.

Even the subtlest mechanisms of these platforms are meticulously calibrated for addiction. Twitter, for instance, deliberately inserts a fraction-of-a-second delay before showing your notification count — a micro-pause engineered to mimic the most addictive moment in slot machine design, the delay between lever pull and jackpot lights. That tiny window — of suspense, hope, and uncertainty — is the exact moment the scarcity loop hits its deepest groove.

It’s a scarcity loop — one that hijacks our nervous systems with military precision. But social media adds a twist.

Most scarcity loops are solitary. You pull the lever. You open the fridge. You refresh the Lightning Deal page. But social media injects status into the loop: social standing, moral validation, influence, audience.

It’s not just about what you see. It’s about how others see you. That’s where the loop mutates — from compulsion into performance.

And because status is inherently relative and scarce, the loop becomes endless. You are never influential enough. Never admired enough. Never protected enough. Every reward triggers the next craving. Every like is a small win disguised as a loss. Every moment of recognition is followed by silence. And silence feels like scarcity.

So you post again.

That’s the trap.

And the trap is the point.

What I’ve Changed (And What Changed Me)

For a long time, I kept trying to outthink the machine.

I persuaded myself I stood impervious, protected by my awareness. I told myself I was using it wisely. I told myself I just needed a bit more discipline, a better system, a new app to track the time I was wasting.

Yet the machine requires no consent to weave its influence upon you. It doesn’t need your consent. It just needs your presence. And once it has that, it gets to work — slicing your attention into fragments, smoothing your instincts into performance, and feeding your nervous system the kind of tension it can’t metabolize and can’t resist.

So I stopped trying to think my way out.

I started building walls.

I Broke The Loop

The first change I made was this: I drastically limited my social media time.

Not with willpower. Not with sticky notes or good intentions. With LeechBlock — a browser extension meant for digital restraint — and a schedule designed to make temptation feel ridiculous.

I set it so that the only window during which I can change the settings is between 1 and 2am. That’s it. One hour. In the middle of the night. If I want to override the system, I have to set an alarm, get out of bed, and deliberately walk toward the noise I’ve spent so long trying to quiet.

And that’s the point.

The peril of social media lies not solely in its seductive pull. It’s that it does so mindlessly — before you’re awake enough, conscious enough, present enough to notice what you’re doing. So I built a delay. A layer. A moment of friction.

And that was enough.

Not to eliminate the urge. Not to stop the craving. But to interrupt the reflex — the seamless slide from thought to tap to timeline. That pause — that deliberate, awkward pause — is where I started to get my breath back.

There are tools made for parents who want to protect their kids from the internet. I’ve begun using them to protect myself from it.

Because I don’t need greater discipline. I need fewer decisions.

I need guardrails so strong they make the choice for me — or at least, make me feel the weight of the choice before I make it.

That’s not weakness. That’s design.

And for the first time in years, I’m designing something for my own mind — not for the algorithm’s.

I Changed the Inputs — and the Ritual

When I cut down on social media, I didn’t just leave an empty space.

I went looking for something better to put in its place.

I started curating inputs — deliberately seeking out places that reward thinking, not just reacting. I bookmarked a few longform sites from across the spectrum — some from the right, some from the left — and made a habit of reading from both. Slowly. With attention. Without checking for whether I agreed.

For alignment with others is not the aim.

I also created a ritual for the social media time I still allow myself — not as a loophole, but as a safeguard. A way to enter the arena with my armor on.

Before I scroll, I remind myself: the internet is a kaleidoscope and a derangement machine.

I am not right because people agree with me.

I am not wrong because they don’t.

And none of this — not the applause, not the insults, not the silence — has anything at all to do with truth.

I have parasocial relationships going in both directions. Just because the preternaturally magnificent Lionel Shriver and the brilliant lads (

Francis Foster

and

Konstantin Kisin

) on

Triggernometry

said a lot of things I agree with in her most recent interview doesn’t mean I’m right. It just means we happened to land on the same patch of ground, from different directions, for a little while.

And just because I have kind, good people who read my Substack — people who reach out, who tell me I’ve helped them, who share my essays with their friends — doesn’t make me right either.

Some agree because their worldview lines up with mine.

Some agree because they know I wrestle with depression and they want to lift me up, help me feel seen, feel strong.

Some, maybe, just want my attention.

The internet flattens all that nuance — until affirmation feels like certainty and opposition feels like threat.

But this ritual, of consciously reminding myself that every interaction stems from multiple motivations, of which neither I nor the other people involved are likely fully aware, helps restore the depth.

It reminds me that validation is not evidence. That consensus is not clarity. That being agreed with is not the same as being correct.

And that the point was never to win the argument.

The point was to stay human.

I Found A Way to Focus (No, It Wasn’t Willpower)

After years of trying every trick in the book — pomodoros, ramps, timers, reward charts, browser extensions, shame spirals — I found something that worked.

Not perfectly. Not universally. But profoundly.

The brain.fm system has been, for me, a miracle.¹

I don’t use that word lightly. But that’s what it felt like: a sudden, seismic shift in my ability to do what I wanted to do.

To read, uninterrupted. To work. To stay with a thought instead of abandoning it midway for a hit of novelty. To focus — not just for a few precious minutes, but for long, flowing stretches of time.

Here’s what happened: the scary storyteller in my head went quiet.

You know the one. The narrator that pipes up when you try to sit still. The one that invents catastrophic futures or replays humiliations from eighth grade. The one that never shuts up unless it has something to watch, hear, scroll, or manage.

I didn’t expect anything. I’ve trained that narrator for years — mostly by distracting it. But when I started using brain.fm, something shifted. The music didn’t draw my attention or try to compete with my thoughts. It just quietly occupied the part of my brain that usually spun up anxiety like cotton candy. And with that part busy, the rest of me could breathe.

For the first time in forever, I lost track of my phone — the device that has streamed background noise into my hearing aids every waking hour since 2020.

For the first time, I had to set a timer to stop doing things.

The music, in itself, holds no enchantment. It’s slightly manipulated sound — engineered for “neural entrainment,” if you want the science — but what matters isn’t the term. What matters is what it made possible.

Silence, without panic. Focus, without a fight.

Even when I’m anxious.

Even when the day’s been long and the task is hard.

I’m not claiming this is a miracle cure for everyone. I don’t know if what I have is trauma, ADHD, or some cocktail of both. But what I know is this: something in my mind needed a low hum to feel safe enough to stop running.

And this gave it that hum.

So now, when I sit down to write, I put my headphones in. I hit play. And the noise — the noise that used to live inside me — stays out.

I Went Analog — and Got My Mind Back

I started prioritizing real conversations. Not Discord pings or reactive texting, but actual voice-to-voice contact — calling people I care about, hearing their pauses, their laughter, the tiny shifts in tone that remind me they’re real. Not avatars. Not usernames. This isn’t doable for everyone — people are busy. People live in other time zones. But when they can, I make it work on my end.

One of the most powerful changes: I started reading paper books again.

That meant making physical room. I moved some of my favorite LEGO builds — the ones I love displaying — into a closet, just to free up shelf space. That hurt, but it was worth it. The act of cradling a book, of turning its tangible pages, settles into the body with a singular weight. The experience is richer. More complete. You don’t skim a paper book the same way you skim a screen.

I still keep comfort reading on my Kindle — old favorites I can revisit anytime, especially if I’m stuck somewhere with a long wait or a heavy heart. But for new material, I’ve gone back to ink and paper. It’s helped me slow down. Sink in. Stay.

I’ve also started riding my exercise bike more. Not to chase fitness metrics or beat a record — just to feel my body move. To remind myself that I live in one. And reading a paper book goes with that much more readily than a Kindle.

And when I can’t manage full focus — when my brain won’t settle on just one thing — I’ve stopped reaching for my phone. I draw instead.

The last time I binged a show with

Josh Slocum

, I couldn’t keep my attention fully on it. My mind was skittering, restless. So I got my pencil sets and a printed photo from the car — which were there deliberately and specifically so I could do this — along with some paper and worked on a drawing while we watched. But the important thing is what I didn’t do: I didn’t scroll. I didn’t disappear into a pocket-sized world of other people’s opinions and someone else’s dopamine script.

I have also scheduled regular time where I don’t have to do anything at all — with one rule.

During that time, the only things I’m allowed to do are draw or solve Math Olympiad problems.

That shouldn’t feel like discipline. I love both. I always have. But when your nervous system is wired for the instant gratification of flickering novelty, even your deepest pleasures can feel like chores.

That’s the heartbreak of dopamine hijacking: it trains your brain to prefer less joy, faster over real joy, slower.

And it takes time — and gentleness, which I am not naturally inclined towards, with regard to myself — to retrain it.

But every time I choose pencil over phone, puzzle over scroll, I carve a small notch in the old loop. I interrupt the pattern. I remind myself what it feels like to be whole.

Attention to Religion/Spirituality

I also turned more of my attention toward spirituality — or at least, toward the kind that doesn’t require belief in a conscious, personal deity who loves me. (I’m an atheist by most definitions.)

I consistently find the best answers to life’s hardest questions in Buddhism. So I’ve been studying the Dhammapada, the Four Noble Truths, and the Eightfold Path with more seriousness, as well as more softness. I’ve increased my meditation time — not as a way to achieve anything, but as a way to sit still with what is.

Such a path will not beckon to all. But I do think everyone has something — a text, a teacher, a tradition — that invites them back to clarity. Back to attention. Back to reality.

Whatever yours is, go there. Study it like your life depends on it.

Because it really might.

Not Universal, But True

Some of the changes I’ve made are probably too me-specific to function as advice. But they’ve helped — more than I expected, and in ways I didn’t predict.

I ceased chasing the news, at least in its performative guise. I still read about things that matter. But I don’t pretend anymore that doomscrolling headlines is the same thing as civic engagement, or that being perpetually upset about the moral failures of politicians makes me a better citizen.

Becoming a reasonably successful writer of culture war hot takes made this a hidden-in-plain-sight fact that I somehow forgot, but I’ve always been more interested in human stories than politics. Stories about people, the trouble they get in, and how they feel about the ways they get themselves out have always been more interesting to me than whether the team of narcissists I mostly agree with is winning its current shouting match against the team of narcissists I mostly don’t.

So I went back to novels.

Not because fiction is escapism, but because it isn’t. At least not in the cheap sense. Novels demand that you sit with ambiguity. That you attend to interiority. That you remember what it means for people to be complicated, and good, and mistaken, and redeemable.

And I needed that reminder. I still do.

I also bought a new journal — nothing fancy, just a place to log what happens when a fragment hijacks me. I write down which version of me got captured, how long it lasted, and why it happened.

Most recent entry: the black-pilled fragment. The one that believes America’s Political Borderline Personality Disorder is about to swing, hard, in the other direction — away from Wokeness, yes, but straight into a different kind of madness. One where antisemitism is normalized, where actual racism returns with clean lines and new branding, where my freedom as a single woman quietly dissolves into “a cultural moment.” That fragment took over for about an hour after I read a cluster of conservative commentators earnestly praising Marx — not the man, but the tools. The methods. The revolutionary architecture. Same blueprint, just for the “right” aims this time.

Being black-pilled is a weirdly soothing worldview. Easier than anxiety. Even relaxing, in its own nihilistic way.

That’s the kind of pattern I try to notice now. Not with judgment — just attention. The kind that might, someday, make different choices possible.

I’ve included those journal entries below, in case this is hard for those of you who haven’t been in therapy your whole adult lives to envision. 😅

And as soon as the weather allowed it, I started spending weekends as far from my apartment as possible. Trees help. So do birds. And dirt.

The physical world is slow and complex and uninterested in my performance. It reminds me that I am not a feed. That I have a body. That the wind does not care who’s trending.

Conclusion: The Thread We’re Still Holding

If the Unified Theory of Networked Narcissism was the map, then Parts I, II, and III were the terrain: the psychic fragmentation, the algorithmic manipulation, the emotional chaos. Together, they showed how the machinery of social media doesn’t just expose what’s broken in us — it breaks us further, then sells the wreckage back to us as connection.

Part IV has been something else.

Not a fix. Not a guide. Just a glimpse of what it looks like to begin walking backward out of the fire. Slowly. Unevenly. Without certainty, but with intent.

And if there’s a common thread between everything I’ve written here — a thread that starts in the theory and runs through the damage, the performance, the derangement, the numbness — it’s this:

We cannot linger in the feed and preserve our full humanity.

We cannot hold the shape of ourselves — our real selves, the quiet ones underneath the fragments — while being trained, every day, to react before we think, to perform before we understand, to brand before we belong.

But we can step away.

Not perfectly. Not forever. But long enough to remember what clarity feels like. Long enough to practice choosing, instead of being chosen by the machine.

That’s what I’ve tried to do. That’s what this essay is: not a solution, but a signal. A way of saying that even now — even with everything stacked against us — it’s still possible to build a life outside the loop. A life with walls and rituals and trees. A life where attention is given freely, not extracted.

A life where the self is something you tend, not something you spend.

For in the feed, we forfeit not merely time. We’re losing the thread — of coherence, of seriousness, of mercy. And if we lose that too long, we lose the ability to find each other.

Because this isn’t just about peace of mind. Or focus. Or better mornings.

It’s about everything that matters.

The chaos of social media is not a glitch in the system — it is the system. And systems like this don’t just distort individuals. They unmake societies. They erode our capacity for nuance, memory, dialogue, mercy. And once those go, freedom follows.

If we cannot see each other, we cannot govern ourselves.

If we cannot think clearly, we cannot choose freely.

And if we forget what it means to be whole — to be tethered, to be real — we will follow the algorithm wherever it leads.

Even if it leads us into a totalitarian hellscape, smiling the whole way.

So yes, this is about everything.

And if you yet read on, it signifies you still grasp the thread.

So am I.

Not always gracefully. Not always well.

But still — with trembling hands, sweaty fingers, and a grip that slips and tightens and slips again —

I’m holding on.

Because the thread matters.

And because I believe — even now — that it’s the only thing standing between us and the darkness.

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1. In-depth discussion of my experience here.