Digital minimalism, logging off, and the intimacy economy
Where do we go from here?
Thanks for reading! Unsquare is a regular feature written by Jaime Derringer about creativity, business, leadership, and technology.
My whole body wants me to log off. I feel it pulling at me every day, and especially when I am mindlessly scrolling. I feel like I’m a zombie on autopilot, searching for something—what? I don’t know—but never finding it. Even though I’m no longer doomscrolling, the zombie-scrolling leaves me depressed, often questioning myself: am I good enough? Beautiful enough? Successful enough? All the comparing was getting to me. And, honestly, this internal dialogue makes me angry. It is not only robbing me of my self worth, but time, which is the only asset I really have, and what I value more and more as I age.
It started a little over two years ago, when I was feeling a personal shift bubbling up to the surface, a subtle repulsion for social media. It has been growing louder ever since, and in the past six months has started occupying my daily thoughts.
Clearly, I’m not alone.
Folks on Substack are posting about logging off of socials (while still posting on Notes), but I get it—Substack feels like a much healthier, less addictive platform. But, how long before things become toxic and addictive here?
Starting with the dumbphone trend, we’re seeing younger generations embracing more offline time. Our interests online have begun to shift from individual-focused videos to conversations. The next step is interactive (live) online experiences, and the step after that (I think) will be AR/VR experiences.
In my interview with Walt Cassidy, he talked about how he’s deleted his social media accounts and is focusing on “algorithm-free zones.” He sometimes even leaves his phone behind when he goes out, which I thought was brave because doing so would give me a panic attack. His advice was to try it on a chill day, like a Sunday, and go from there. I’ve yet to take the plunge.
I’m not sure whether the answer is to bust out my old pink Razr phone or create rules around my addiction by only using the apps on desktop. I don’t have the luxury to end my addiction by deleting my accounts altogether, because I need them for my job, and I need my job to survive. This is the reality for many people. And there are times when these accounts come in handy!
I want to emphasize that when I talk about my distaste for certain apps, behaviors, or algorithms, this does not mean that I hate the Internet! I love the Internet. LOVE it. It allowed me to create my dream job. It helped me make new best friends, launch additional businesses, and connect with some of the coolest, smartest people I know. It feeds me, it gives me hope, and it is not evil tech that needs to be banished. However, I think there are better ways to live in balance with it.
A new economy
We’re moving away from the Attention Economy and toward the Intimacy Economy,1 where we will value the quality of our followers, where we allow for more vulnerability. The Intimacy Economy is defined as “market systems where personal and emotional data are exchanged for customized experiences catering to individual emotional and psychological needs.”2 This is a direct result of post-pandemic “extremely online”-ness, which was never meant to permanently replace in-person experiences for the general population.
We’re seeing this play out even with brands, who are looking at influencers’ personal brands and employing the same tactics. They’re joining Substack, creating Close Friends groups on Insta, and hosting more private events. Brand marketers understand that this is a way to connect intimately with their most loyal customers, making them feel special.
But were individual humans ever really supposed to create a personal brand in the first place? No. Not only is it hard to define, it’s exhausting to keep up with creating content. In a Popsugar article, influencer and chef Bronwen Kinzler-Britton says, “Digital minimalism allows me to channel all my creativity into the food rather than curating a persona.”
And, as I’ve talked about before, by nature, brands are consistent and human beings change and evolve. We are also social animals, meant to connect with one another, despite whatever your level of social anxiety.
Ask any business owner or creative and they will tell you that “curating” an online persona is exhausting.
Subcultural shifts and broader implications of AI
Subcultures / counterculture, which were once in the shadows and the deep dark corners of the web, became commoditized by the Clear Net. As Caroline Busta says in her 2021 essay entitled “The internet didn’t kill counterculture—you just won’t find it on Instagram,” ~ “To be truly countercultural today, in a time of tech hegemony, one has to, above all, betray the platform, which may come in the form of betraying or divesting from your public online self.”3
As a frequenter of subcultures, I know that they still exist in dark corners of the web, recently referred to as “dark forests” by
founder , a nod to Liu Cixin’s novel The Dark Forest from the Three Body trilogy.4 They exist on forums like Discord or Signal, in WhatsApp message groups, and in private discussion groups (on and offline).This new era of intimacy will force more folks into the shadows, especially with the rise of AI. Once AI becomes ubiquitous online, we will likely all retreat to human-designated areas of the internet, as discussed in this conversation with Zain Kahn of Superhuman and Google DeepMind Senior PM Logan Kilpatrick.
We need spaces where people can genuinely connect, and if the current online platforms no longer allow that, we'll have to build new ones.
What will these spaces look like? Will we all be on message boards? Will specific Bluesky protocols be able to filter out bots and enable human connection? How will your human-ness be verifiable, and can AI learn how to trick these tests?
To be honest, I’m actually excited about this shift. Perhaps it will bring us back together, both on and offline, without the noise of advertisements, SEO crap, marketing and sales… I think back to the early days of the social net, when we had forums and journals and photo albums and creatively-designed web pages. We created only to express our personalities, not to rank in the results, sell to a customer, or flex or promote something, never asking people to “like or subscribe.”
Perhaps this is my version of “reminiscing about the good old days,” but really what I’m doing is giving myself hope. I can’t help but continue to be an optimist (with a side of realism) in the face of change.
I long for, and hope for, the return to a time when we can log on and log fully off again, not always be connected… unless that eternal connection brings us closer together, instead of so far apart.
I like to think of this little zine as my transition from Clear Net to Dark Forest. I’m not quite there yet, but I want to retreat deeper and deeper into the woods. I hope you will join me there!
Further reading:
https://www.newsweek.com/gen-z-millennials-leave-social-media-offline-internet-2047044
https://calnewport.com/on-digital-minimalism (any book by Cal is worth reading!)
This essay also appears in a most excellent book: The Dark Forest Anthology of the Internet” available via
Read this trilogy - it’s amazing!!!!
Yes yes yes yes! Sounds like we are the same person! 😂 It gives me such joy to connect with other people thinking along these lines out in the wild. Your phone is cute! I busted out my LG Rumor the other day and am attempting to bring it back online. Oddly, that was the first phone I was able to use Twitter on (2008ish?) and it felt fun and exciting back then. Now I just want to shove all that back into a box under the bed.
It seems clear there will be a cheap content (and more!) culture created primarily by AI and that folks will have to make a conscious choice to seek out "artisan" slash made-by-a-human entertainment, art, and activities. Hopefully enough will turn to analog and other choices that it will be strong enough to survive the avalanche of AI.