The more time you spend in the shit stream, the stupider and more boring and just like everyone else you will be. – Tim Kreider
I love Tim Kreider’s book, We Learn Nothing, but I believe I first saw this quote from Austin Kleon. I know Austin frequently mentions how Twitter itself is the purest embodiment of the never ending, slimy, oozing shitstream we cannot escape.
Except we can. It’s fucking hard, but within our power. More on that in a bit.
The original quote comes from an AdviceToWriters interview with Kreider: “The more time you spend immersed in the shitstream of TV/internet/social media the stupider and more boring and just like everyone else you will be. Hang out in real life having good conversations with brilliant and hilarious people, so you can steal their ideas and all the clever things they say. Spend a lot of time alone so you can think up some original thoughts of your own. Have adventures. Get paid.”
He’s speaking in terms of being the best writer you can be, but I think in our world today, avoiding the shitstream is fundamental if you want to become the best person you can be.
What is the shitstream? It can take many forms. It’s checking your phone the second you wake up. It’s the seventeen BREAKING NEWS notifications waiting for you there. It’s refreshing Twitter every few seconds even when you know there’s nothing new, let alone anything that will have the slightest impact on your life. The shitstream of yesterday were billboards and infomercials, but now they’re attached to us, screaming from our pockets. The shitstream can be so many things, because we are increasingly inundated with new garbage ready for us the second we’re bored. The shitstream is what you pay attention to when you don’t want to face ______. It’s what you pull up to distract yourself when you want to avoid something, whether it’s that tough conversation you need to have, the exam you should be studying for, or even just being alone with your thoughts for more than a few minutes straight.
In order to be original, creative, fresh thinkers, we need to pull our heads out of what everyone else is consuming. But in order to keep our sanity, to maintain our well-being, to be healthy, happy individuals, we MUST pull our heads out of the shitstream to breathe in the air and just fucking be.
The internet has always had this pull, but it became crystal clear how explosive and harmful it could be with the 2016 election and beyond. From that point on it’s kept us glued to a screen, itching to hear the next fresh horror. I know this is terrible for me yet have felt helpless trying to battle it back. I’ve blocked Twitter from my computer only to find that the Mobile version is somehow unblockable on my work desktop. There goes that barrier, and with a click there goes my attention. I’ve tried to set self-imposed windows to peek at the news without it swallowing me up, only to pull myself out of the wreckage an hour later, furious at what the head of the EPA is doing, and even more furious at myself for knowing what the fucking head of the EPA is doing. The addicting nature of the internet, purposeful and by design, has overpowered our willpower and discipline. But there are potential solutions worth trying out that we’ll get to. Because we must try. We must try to eliminate the shitstream from our lives as much as we can, so that we can have the freedom to spend time doing the things that we love, that interest us, that make us happy. It’s an ongoing process, filled with proud advances and frustrating backslides. But that’s life.
I don’t want to spend too much time expounding this. I do want to give it a proper introduction though, because I’m going to periodically post examples of the SHITSTREAM and the harm it’s causing us, along with examples of the ANTI-SHITSTREAM, showcasing the tools we can use to help ourselves become free of it, and the people who recognize it and are doing something about it in their own way. Let’s start by looking at two of my favorite comedians: Aziz Ansari and Louis CK.