Welcome to Polymathic Being, a place to explore counterintuitive insights across multiple domains. These essays explore common topics from different perspectives and disciplines to uncover unique insights and solutions.
Today's topic provides helpful insights for separating the fiction of social media from the reality of life. We’ll explore the problems with how social media shapes perception and how getting out and engaging in the world can shift that perception to a healthier mindset. Once you're done reading, I hope you'll Go Touch Grass.
Intro
Social media does not reflect real life.
I know… shocker! But is it? Because more and more I see people treating what they see online as an honest reflection, and I tell you what, it’s not healthy.
I’m not the first to note this, as the phrase, “Touch Grass,” isn’t mine. As the website Know Your Meme explains:
Touch Grass, or Touch Some Grass, is a popular online insult and alternative way of telling someone to "go outside," implying they're spending too much time online and it's affecting their wellbeing. The exact origin of the phrase is unknown, but it started spreading significantly in 2019, becoming increasingly popular on Twitter throughout 2021.
It started trending at a time when social media was exploding, and especially when people were locked down due to COVID, and their only social engagement was online. The thing is, it might be trite, dismissive, or even intended as an insult, but it’s honestly a great recommendation. Go Touch Grass!1
The reason is simple, as Kristi yapp recently shared in Propaganda:
If I could influence your mind right now, I would convince you to avert your eyes from the screen. Walk away from the media propaganda. Put your bare feet on the ground. Feel the grass and the soil. Experience reality. Time on earth is limited. Do not waste it.
It’s well aligned with what we explored here in Heaven is High and the Emperor is far Away, namely that:
You don’t have to let politics dictate your life by bringing the emperor into your home. You don’t have to collapse heaven with the hellscape of social media. You have agency to take control of both.
Yet we do exactly the opposite, and you see it everywhere. Worse, it is fed by the online bot farms and unscrupulous ‘influencers’ algowhoring for attention with clickbait and fear porn, which causes the enshittification of everything online.
However, social media does not reflect real life. But we treat it like it does.
This is why the best advice is to Go Touch Grass. Even better, get people together and do it as a group. Get outside, get away from the phone, do a digital detox. What you’ll find is that the real world is a whole lot different, kinder, gentler, and more rational than what you read on TwiX, Threads, or Bluesky.
Shocking to some, you can get along nicely with people you disagree with in person, much better than you can online. Part of that is because of the Con[of]Text, where we lose context without the verbal inflection, and people use more highly charged language online than in person. (excepting those charismatic preachers) It’s a problem we looked at in Psyop, Until Proven Otherwise, where we find examples of:
emotive language that goes far beyond how most authors, outside of creative writing, articulate critical information… …It’s important to note that all this language is wrapped around nuggets of things that are true, but the framing of that language completely changes our interpretation.
When I challenge people who demonstrate these behaviors, I elicit a common reaction from those caught in the throes of the propaganda and misinformation. Namely, that what they are fighting against is so important that even suggesting they slow down and step back unlocks incredible projections, logical fallacies, and rhetorical contortions. Simply put, their brain glitches.
Too many people are so upside down that they view everything as a crucial fight, a battle for survival, where even mundane non-events dominate news cycles for days, as evidenced years ago by Trump’s late-night “covfefe” tweet. That’s because, if you spend too much time online without the right protective barriers, you’re inviting others to come live rent-free in your brain as they hijack your dopamine reward systems and pour outrage after outrage into your life, most of which is exaggerated and much of it is pure imagination.2
We end up here because people don’t Default to Truth. They default to what they want to be true, and so they create the proverbial ‘mountain from a molehill’ where no action is insignificant enough to not warrant an outsized reaction. To the point of Joshua Lavender’s response, he couldn’t fathom that not playing the game did not equal rolling over and giving up. He exemplifies the problem with Quantum Superposition and Politics, which results in us vs. them false binaries and divisions.
But that’s a terrible way to live. It’s also a world that exists in the artificial bits and bytes online, and when you step outside, you realize you can leave it all behind. It’s a lesson I’m working to incorporate and have been taking intentional steps to address.
Taking Action
As a writer, I face a bane in that there’s a level of engagement I must maintain in order to grow, collaborate, and write. That’s why I work to Train My Algorithm and constantly craft social media feeds that balance healthy conversations, invite rational disagreements, and avoid creating an ideological echo chamber for me.
But the more important steps are to actually get out and touch grass. In this vein, I’ve taken the following steps.
I bike with my kids at their mountain biking practices.
I invite people over for dinner and drinks almost every weekend.
I work with my hands, dig in the dirt with my tractor, and build real things.
I engage with people in public, I smile, nod, and say hello. I ask questions, crack jokes, and get to know new people.
I try to call friends regularly to talk, not text.
I’m coordinating a guy’s whiskey night to counter both the online divisions as well as the subsequent dearth of male engagement.
I prefer in-person meetings over teleconferences and strive to get co-workers away from their computers and into face-to-face engagements, including after hours.
I go for walks with my wife, where we just talk.
In fact, when we’re in a car, we almost never turn on the radio, just talk.
I step outside, look up, and realize that Heaven can be high, and the emperor should be far away, and that it’s up to me to make that happen.
So, Go Touch Grass. Get out there, walk the streets. Watch what real people are doing in real life. Have conversations and ask people questions. You’ll be amazed at how normal, healthy, and low-key the world really is and how much Social media does not reflect real life.
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Further Reading from Authors I Appreciate
I highly recommend the following Substacks for their great content and complementary explorations of topics that Polymathic Being shares.
Goatfury Writes All-around great daily essays
Never Stop Learning Insightful Life Tips and Tricks
Cyborgs Writing Highly useful insights into using AI for writing
Educating AI Integrating AI into education
Socratic State of Mind Powerful insights into the philosophy of agency
The phrase is sometimes used as a pejorative and can come across as patronizing but if it lands that way, it might be on target and you're taking yourself too seriously like Josh did in the later example.
I called one person out for their factual inaccuracy, and their reply was “Well, it could happen.” Yes… Anything could happen, but the facts did not indicate that it would, and that thing did not, in fact, happen.
Very necessary these days
Yes!
A guy’s whiskey night.
Stealing that idea. Cheers 🥃