Did you know there are different kinds of diets? 

(KEANU VOICE) WHOAAAAAA!!!!

It’s not just choosing rather or not to shove that chip full of queso down your throat, or if that whole burger should be eaten or cut in half. Portion control extends itself to social media, where an addiction can occur just as fast. Hello, I am Dan and I am a social media addict. 100%. That’s why I decided to cut down my content and interactions this week.

That’s what we call a social media diet. One that includes deleting one of the three main apps-Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Because we all know what happens if you don’t choose to just lessen or make a single cut from the roster. You’ll just jab your phone screen more and more, feverishly checking texts and emails, news, alerts, and the same camera roll you’ve stared at for hours. Before long, you’ll be on safari looking up your Twitter to see if anyone placed a grenade in front of your account while you were out. After 32 hours, you’ll be back on all three slowly going mad.

So, start small instead and watch it last. This week, I significantly cut down my tweets and interactions there while outright deleting the IG and Twitter apps from my phone. All that leaves me with is the book of face, which allows me to plug my Dose of Buffa page more often. So, I didn’t stop talking on the internet; more like moving the words around into the right places. And it’s working. I haven’t gotten into a useless argument about why I didn’t love a superhero movie enough (coming from a big superhero movie fan) for a few days. I haven’t been told that my top 5 movies are not someone else’s top 5 movies in a few days, or scrolled slow enough to see it.

There hasn’t been a pointless and infuriating baseball thread about a team and sport that is currently closed for business… for the foreseeable future. Fantasy football honks waxing poetically about their ability to build a roster on Yahoo Sports has been muted. I haven’t scrolled the timeline much–missing whiny reasons not to get vaccinated (just get the fucking shot!), bullshit political debates, and what the 28th photo in my camera roll is. It feels good, not treating social media like an unpaid job and trying to determine where you should put a thought.

Example: Should I put this review of “Tragedy of Macbeth” on Twitter now or later? Maybe post it on Facebook instead? Will people even read it if I didn’t either dry hump Joel Coen’s movie up and down the aisle or just completely trash it? Probably not. People don’t care for anything outside of extremes these days; it’s like an arms race of hot takes. Constant hot takes, or else your article sucks and is useless. Hence my move to Substack behind a paywall; you’ll have to pay to get there and be outraged by what I said. (Coming soon!)

All I did was cut one app completely out and only posted articles on the bird spot while leaning into my FB content. Stress levels have gone down, oddball debates have decreased, and the oxygen hasn’t completely escaped out of my fucking head before noon. It’s still there as 2022 stretches its legs.

So, if you are a resolution fanatic, I have an idea for you: go on a social media diet. See how it goes and if you feel better after a few days. If not, hop back on there and fire away. Which candy gets taken away out of the four options? Quote-tweet your favorite moment of isolation from the past year! Pick the four photos where you look like shit so we all know humans deal with the same shit. Sound fun? Take a damn break then.

Thanks for reading and please tip your writer with a share.

Ps. Remember, resolutions are empty hype vessels unless you actually STICK to it. Today is just another day.