Such a good piece. 40 years ago when we had no Internet, the only way I had of meeting fellow gay people was a small ad in the local paper. After collecting the replies from the PO box we met. We arranged get togethers. We went clubbing. Life revolved around people meeting. We dealt with ignorance and bigotry, and just wanting to be accepted, but we supported each other in person, not online. We grew whole communities, built life long friendships, lost friends from AIDS, but it was wonderful. The digital world has opened up bigger divisions and made meeting each other harder. We absolutely need to reconnect on a human level and disconnect on a digital one.
Thank you so much Tracey! Thank you so much for sharing this. I think that the more we remember how we used to meet people, the more accessible it will seem again. Sometimes a little bit of effort makes the meeting up that much sweeter. I'm so glad you're here and thanks again for sharing your story. <3
I’ve been living in communal homes for the last ten years and spend a lot less time on my phone because I’m default around my chosen family, and they’re just more fun than my phone. Beau (Instagram.com/gaybritishbear) has been doing an amazing job building queer coliving communities and documenting his learnings along the way. The research on health and longevity is very clear that social connections are the most impactful for our long term health - and what better way to build them than to share the place you spend the most hours of your day.
Gillian! I'm so glad to see you here :) Communal living truly does seem like an antidote to this modern age of disconnection, and that's probably why it resonates with so many people, as we talked about. I just followed Beau and can't wait to learn more from him!
One of my favorite pieces. I’m so glad you’re writing about this because it is genuinely scary. And for those reading, Aidan and I have already made small changes to how we interact with our phones and it has made a big difference!
Aidan, this was beautiful. Thank you so much for this. Loneliness has been a historical difficulty of mine; it's a place where my Enneagram 4-ness loves to shine. Even over the past few weeks, the amount of loneliness I feel within my life has become increasingly apparent, but it's been tough to know what to do with that (or where to go from it). I appreciate your words here, and the notes you have on the power of writing hit a special place in my heart. Thank you for sharing, my friend, and thank you for being the light you are.
Kevin! This made my day! As an Enneagram 4, as well, I definitely feel similarly to you. I think that the best thing to do with loneliness is to express it, write about it, and tell people about it. And I think that the way you express self-love and all of your online existence heplls bring people together and bring them in touch with themselves. I am so grateful to know you and call you one of my dear Substack friends.
It is truly impossible to get me to shut up about digital spaces, phones, technology, and the attention economy, and I'm always THRILLED to see others talking about it too. What have you been reading about it? Here are my top favorites:
- Stolen Focus, which perfectly encapsulates the scale, horror, and intentionality of the attention crisis we're in
- Digital Minimalism, which is the best one I've found for starting to find some new peace and a way out while waiting for bigger solutions
I've also liked these others, though they haven't felt as absolutely critical to read as the first two:
- The Siren's Call, which is about the history of the concept of the attention economy
- The Anxious Generation, which has a lot of really interesting stuff about technology's impacts on youth beyond just the normal "phone bad" kind of stuff.
Also big rec to get on the opal app, which is a screen time app with more robust reporting and blocking features. It's about $100 a year, but it helps me gain back hours a day of work, and more than that in sleep quality. Highly worth it.
Yes! So much here that I agree with. Stolen Focus has definitely been my rock and launchpad. The way he ties in all of his points with stories about PTown makes my little gay heart so happy. But also How to Do Nothing and I'm in the Middle of the Siren's Call Right Now.
I need to check out The Anxious Generation and Digital Minimalism though!
And boy do I love Opal. It has totally changed the game for me. Also putting the screen time widget on each screen so I can actively see how much time I'm spending in relation to my goal time for the day has really helped me so far.
I love that we're both feeling the same way about this, friend :)
This is awesome!! I think you’ll love digital minimalism soo much, it’s so awesome and has some really well thought out solutions and boundaries.
Do you want to be friends on opal?? I’m always looking for more accountability buddies for my screen time goals and most of my IRL friends find me a touch annoying for it hahaha
UH!!! you and my kid -- text text text. I insisted on setting up a routine for every other day ACTUAL phone calls, unless there's a meeting that goes on too long or something comes up. I actually had to call the township FOR THEM when their water went out to see when it would come back on. LOL!! Must be a GenX and Millennial thing.
It is! I'm going to be writing a piece about "Why Millennials Hate Phone Calls" in the future, but for now, I think it comes down to our inability to deal with the unknown. Phone calls feel stressful because we can't control how we're receiving the information or how much time we have between receiving and having to make a decision.
Yes, I've been feeling a disconnect from people, especially in the queer community. I've been spending much of my time trying to earn a living.
But Substack is helping me combine the two worlds as I've been going to Pride events and filming Live videos for my pub. I'm still not at an ideal place, but it's something.
I totally feel this. There's something about Substack and the community on here (and how it can be moved offline) that feels like we're moving towards some better thing. I'm excited for folks to get to read our collab and further build whatever it is we're all building on this corner of the internet!
Aidan this was incredible and necessary. You are one hundred percent correct, we are loosing the art of being in presence with each other. Of seeing people, instead of looking at them. I think moving forward into this next year hear in the US, that community is needed now more than ever. It is the very foundation of every successful push for rights in the history of the nation. If we are to survive this threat, and not fall as a house divided, we must stand in community.
We are happy to have you here on this space, writing and creating a virtual community, a place where virtual connections can be forged and made real, together.
I completely agree with you. More and more people are talking about it, and I think it's so desperately needed. Not just connection, but true in-person community, even if it's challenging. I am so glad you're here and love how you phrased "where virtual connections can be forged and made real, together." Because yes, these all do have to start somewhere, but we can take them offline however we so choose.
Hi there Aidan, I really enjoyed this article. I listened to it which is unusual for me, as I've never been much of a podcast listener. You describe a life I used to live back in the 90s when I was in university, a long time before the internet even. I miss the kinds of connections I had back in those days. As for the queer community, I feel rather detached from it now. I live in Berlin, and the scene here is very queer, very political, and very exclusionary. There seems to be a group opinion on everything that you must conform to or else you're not,"one of us." And for a group that demands diversity, I feel there is very little of that in how we think as a community. Again, this is also the way our "pick-a-side" media has trained us. And maybe if I grew up with a phone I'd be the same way, so I can't judge it. But I do feel there was a time when we as a group had more unity, connection, and purpose and I do find myself at 53 wishing I could transport the whole bar back in time with me to say, look, this is also what we are capable of.
Hi Karl! Thank you so much for this comment. I love your concept of undividing, and I think we're very much aligned with how we're looking at this whole complex dilemma we find ourselves in.
I think a lot of what you're describing in terms of infighting and conformity is the fault of the Big Tech companies, who have atrophied our patience for other people and our ability to encounter views that are different than our own. I find that if I think of all of these as systemic problems and not individual ones they strangely seem much easier to deal with.
But I did grow up with a phone and feel the same way as you, so I think that there's more desire for this out there than you might think. I'm very excited to get to know you better and build community with you!
We’re not just distracted; we’re disembodied — and the cost is intimacy, creativity, and presence. Count me in for the journey back to real, felt, grounded connection 🌱✨
Aidan, I love this new piece aligning tech and queer connection. Being older, I recall having to CALL friends and plan in person get-togethers. It was effort, but worth it.
Truthfully, in any decade it does get harder to plan connections as 'adulting' sets in. I look forward to more on this topic from you.
Awww, thank you David! You're one of my big inspirations on here. It's always so nice to hear your support and it really helps me keep going. I look forward to more of our connections.
Excellent points. As a child of the early 60s (and married to a man ten years younger), I witnessed this explosion of advertising -- from radio to television, movies, the internet (yes, I do remember the PRE-net days, ugh) and phones that even cut back on ACTUAL conversation (just text me!) SHUDDER. Might have to do a Substack post on this! hmm. I am thankful for this platform, for IG (loooove photos, videos), but ... one must be deliberate in shutting off all that. And you're right. Writing is wonderful. I'll go back to my next chapter, in fact. 😻
I hope your chapter writing is going well! Yeah, it is wild to watch even for me, the past 20 years so I can't imagine how explosive the growth has been in the past 50. I think a big part of it, too, is our inability to deal with the unknown (which is why millennials hate phone calls) But the unknown is where the excitement of life is!
I think about the concept of loneliness, now, as a direct correlation to the Covid fallout, and our lack of collective reckoning with just how life-altering it was. It served the bottom line of those tech billionaires to resume the status quo and return to business-as-usual as quickly as possible, once Covid was “over,” which meant erasing as much of the horror of that time from our memories as they could.
I feel lonely much of the time, but the inverse of that is that I feel very proud of myself when I make the conscious effort not to be. Sometimes, the power those feelings of loneliness are outside of my control. But, when I attach real benefits to the decision not to be alone (neuroplasticity, community building, social edification) I feel an overwhelming sense of growth and inspiration within myself, immediately. And that dopamine hit is significantly more beneficial and long lasting than anything my digital isolation can provide.
I love this Drew. And I love that our coffee date last week felt to me like a lot of what you're writing about here. We definitely got so conditioned during COVID in a way that will probably never be fully understood and it will take so much conscious work to unlearn those patterns that we fell into because we had no other choice.
I can't wait to keep building community with you :)
I feel like the basic need and desire for connection was so highlighted by the pandemic in the mad rush afterward for people to go to live events. The overwhelming demand for live concerts, sporting events, etc (and the willingness to pay almost any price for tickets to these). Yet the movie business hasn’t really recovered fully, perhaps because sitting in a dark theatre, even with other people, doesn’t quite satisfy that same sense of connection and interaction as these other types of in person events do.
And it can be frustrating even when one is able to bring people together, such as for a dinner or afternoon drinks on the deck, that people are so often still on their phones even while interacting with others. This FOMO that has been ingrained and exacerbated by the tech companies and social media seems to have made it where people think even spending a few minutes interacting with someone else might mean they miss a meme or picture of what sandwich someone had for lunch. We have friends over to watch a movie, yet they are on their phones while the movie is playing … I’ve been considering a basket where it is mandatory they put their phones during the movie (or while we are playing a game, or during dinner, whatever) … and can already imagine the looks of sheer horror on their faces at the mere suggestion and possibility of being without their phones for a couple of hours (convinced the world will end, a friend or family member will be rushed to the hospital, an emergency will erupt at work, or Moo Deng will post the funniest meme ever, perhaps all of these things happening at the same moment, and they will be horrifically out of the loop).
There does seem to also be a related dumbing down effect this has caused, lack of, not just shortened, attention spans, yes, but also the growing inability to even be able to read and comprehend more than the length of a meme quote. Which, I wonder, might then contribute to the feelings of loneliness and disconnection because there’s a loss in being able to engage in sustained conversation and thought, making it less appealing (or more fearful) to be with other people.
Such a good piece. 40 years ago when we had no Internet, the only way I had of meeting fellow gay people was a small ad in the local paper. After collecting the replies from the PO box we met. We arranged get togethers. We went clubbing. Life revolved around people meeting. We dealt with ignorance and bigotry, and just wanting to be accepted, but we supported each other in person, not online. We grew whole communities, built life long friendships, lost friends from AIDS, but it was wonderful. The digital world has opened up bigger divisions and made meeting each other harder. We absolutely need to reconnect on a human level and disconnect on a digital one.
Thank you so much Tracey! Thank you so much for sharing this. I think that the more we remember how we used to meet people, the more accessible it will seem again. Sometimes a little bit of effort makes the meeting up that much sweeter. I'm so glad you're here and thanks again for sharing your story. <3
I was right there with you. A fantastic time it was. I miss it.
I’ve been living in communal homes for the last ten years and spend a lot less time on my phone because I’m default around my chosen family, and they’re just more fun than my phone. Beau (Instagram.com/gaybritishbear) has been doing an amazing job building queer coliving communities and documenting his learnings along the way. The research on health and longevity is very clear that social connections are the most impactful for our long term health - and what better way to build them than to share the place you spend the most hours of your day.
Gillian! I'm so glad to see you here :) Communal living truly does seem like an antidote to this modern age of disconnection, and that's probably why it resonates with so many people, as we talked about. I just followed Beau and can't wait to learn more from him!
One of my favorite pieces. I’m so glad you’re writing about this because it is genuinely scary. And for those reading, Aidan and I have already made small changes to how we interact with our phones and it has made a big difference!
Thanks babe, I wouldn't be able to do any of it without you.
So very timely, Aidan. Thank you...well done, my virtual friend! 🌈✌️
Thank you so much Clint! I'm so glad to know you :)
Aidan, this was beautiful. Thank you so much for this. Loneliness has been a historical difficulty of mine; it's a place where my Enneagram 4-ness loves to shine. Even over the past few weeks, the amount of loneliness I feel within my life has become increasingly apparent, but it's been tough to know what to do with that (or where to go from it). I appreciate your words here, and the notes you have on the power of writing hit a special place in my heart. Thank you for sharing, my friend, and thank you for being the light you are.
Kevin! This made my day! As an Enneagram 4, as well, I definitely feel similarly to you. I think that the best thing to do with loneliness is to express it, write about it, and tell people about it. And I think that the way you express self-love and all of your online existence heplls bring people together and bring them in touch with themselves. I am so grateful to know you and call you one of my dear Substack friends.
It is truly impossible to get me to shut up about digital spaces, phones, technology, and the attention economy, and I'm always THRILLED to see others talking about it too. What have you been reading about it? Here are my top favorites:
- Stolen Focus, which perfectly encapsulates the scale, horror, and intentionality of the attention crisis we're in
- Digital Minimalism, which is the best one I've found for starting to find some new peace and a way out while waiting for bigger solutions
I've also liked these others, though they haven't felt as absolutely critical to read as the first two:
- The Siren's Call, which is about the history of the concept of the attention economy
- The Anxious Generation, which has a lot of really interesting stuff about technology's impacts on youth beyond just the normal "phone bad" kind of stuff.
Also big rec to get on the opal app, which is a screen time app with more robust reporting and blocking features. It's about $100 a year, but it helps me gain back hours a day of work, and more than that in sleep quality. Highly worth it.
Yes! So much here that I agree with. Stolen Focus has definitely been my rock and launchpad. The way he ties in all of his points with stories about PTown makes my little gay heart so happy. But also How to Do Nothing and I'm in the Middle of the Siren's Call Right Now.
I need to check out The Anxious Generation and Digital Minimalism though!
And boy do I love Opal. It has totally changed the game for me. Also putting the screen time widget on each screen so I can actively see how much time I'm spending in relation to my goal time for the day has really helped me so far.
I love that we're both feeling the same way about this, friend :)
This is awesome!! I think you’ll love digital minimalism soo much, it’s so awesome and has some really well thought out solutions and boundaries.
Do you want to be friends on opal?? I’m always looking for more accountability buddies for my screen time goals and most of my IRL friends find me a touch annoying for it hahaha
One of your very best pieces, Aidan. Definitely here for the journey. I have an old school alarm clock but still take my phone to bed! Why?!
Thank you Tom! We just got an alarm clock in order to fix that very issue. I'm so glad you're here!
UH!!! you and my kid -- text text text. I insisted on setting up a routine for every other day ACTUAL phone calls, unless there's a meeting that goes on too long or something comes up. I actually had to call the township FOR THEM when their water went out to see when it would come back on. LOL!! Must be a GenX and Millennial thing.
It is! I'm going to be writing a piece about "Why Millennials Hate Phone Calls" in the future, but for now, I think it comes down to our inability to deal with the unknown. Phone calls feel stressful because we can't control how we're receiving the information or how much time we have between receiving and having to make a decision.
Yes, I've been feeling a disconnect from people, especially in the queer community. I've been spending much of my time trying to earn a living.
But Substack is helping me combine the two worlds as I've been going to Pride events and filming Live videos for my pub. I'm still not at an ideal place, but it's something.
I totally feel this. There's something about Substack and the community on here (and how it can be moved offline) that feels like we're moving towards some better thing. I'm excited for folks to get to read our collab and further build whatever it is we're all building on this corner of the internet!
Aidan this was incredible and necessary. You are one hundred percent correct, we are loosing the art of being in presence with each other. Of seeing people, instead of looking at them. I think moving forward into this next year hear in the US, that community is needed now more than ever. It is the very foundation of every successful push for rights in the history of the nation. If we are to survive this threat, and not fall as a house divided, we must stand in community.
We are happy to have you here on this space, writing and creating a virtual community, a place where virtual connections can be forged and made real, together.
I completely agree with you. More and more people are talking about it, and I think it's so desperately needed. Not just connection, but true in-person community, even if it's challenging. I am so glad you're here and love how you phrased "where virtual connections can be forged and made real, together." Because yes, these all do have to start somewhere, but we can take them offline however we so choose.
Hi there Aidan, I really enjoyed this article. I listened to it which is unusual for me, as I've never been much of a podcast listener. You describe a life I used to live back in the 90s when I was in university, a long time before the internet even. I miss the kinds of connections I had back in those days. As for the queer community, I feel rather detached from it now. I live in Berlin, and the scene here is very queer, very political, and very exclusionary. There seems to be a group opinion on everything that you must conform to or else you're not,"one of us." And for a group that demands diversity, I feel there is very little of that in how we think as a community. Again, this is also the way our "pick-a-side" media has trained us. And maybe if I grew up with a phone I'd be the same way, so I can't judge it. But I do feel there was a time when we as a group had more unity, connection, and purpose and I do find myself at 53 wishing I could transport the whole bar back in time with me to say, look, this is also what we are capable of.
Hi Karl! Thank you so much for this comment. I love your concept of undividing, and I think we're very much aligned with how we're looking at this whole complex dilemma we find ourselves in.
I think a lot of what you're describing in terms of infighting and conformity is the fault of the Big Tech companies, who have atrophied our patience for other people and our ability to encounter views that are different than our own. I find that if I think of all of these as systemic problems and not individual ones they strangely seem much easier to deal with.
But I did grow up with a phone and feel the same way as you, so I think that there's more desire for this out there than you might think. I'm very excited to get to know you better and build community with you!
We’re not just distracted; we’re disembodied — and the cost is intimacy, creativity, and presence. Count me in for the journey back to real, felt, grounded connection 🌱✨
Correct! We're so disembodied. We're losing the tactile experience of our worlds and our lives and it's frightening for sure.
Aidan, I love this new piece aligning tech and queer connection. Being older, I recall having to CALL friends and plan in person get-togethers. It was effort, but worth it.
Truthfully, in any decade it does get harder to plan connections as 'adulting' sets in. I look forward to more on this topic from you.
Awww, thank you David! You're one of my big inspirations on here. It's always so nice to hear your support and it really helps me keep going. I look forward to more of our connections.
Our "inspiration" then is mutual. Aidan, your writing and perspectives always inspire me to think, enjoy and reflect. Cheers to you. David
Excellent points. As a child of the early 60s (and married to a man ten years younger), I witnessed this explosion of advertising -- from radio to television, movies, the internet (yes, I do remember the PRE-net days, ugh) and phones that even cut back on ACTUAL conversation (just text me!) SHUDDER. Might have to do a Substack post on this! hmm. I am thankful for this platform, for IG (loooove photos, videos), but ... one must be deliberate in shutting off all that. And you're right. Writing is wonderful. I'll go back to my next chapter, in fact. 😻
I hope your chapter writing is going well! Yeah, it is wild to watch even for me, the past 20 years so I can't imagine how explosive the growth has been in the past 50. I think a big part of it, too, is our inability to deal with the unknown (which is why millennials hate phone calls) But the unknown is where the excitement of life is!
Loved this one so much!
I think about the concept of loneliness, now, as a direct correlation to the Covid fallout, and our lack of collective reckoning with just how life-altering it was. It served the bottom line of those tech billionaires to resume the status quo and return to business-as-usual as quickly as possible, once Covid was “over,” which meant erasing as much of the horror of that time from our memories as they could.
I feel lonely much of the time, but the inverse of that is that I feel very proud of myself when I make the conscious effort not to be. Sometimes, the power those feelings of loneliness are outside of my control. But, when I attach real benefits to the decision not to be alone (neuroplasticity, community building, social edification) I feel an overwhelming sense of growth and inspiration within myself, immediately. And that dopamine hit is significantly more beneficial and long lasting than anything my digital isolation can provide.
I love this Drew. And I love that our coffee date last week felt to me like a lot of what you're writing about here. We definitely got so conditioned during COVID in a way that will probably never be fully understood and it will take so much conscious work to unlearn those patterns that we fell into because we had no other choice.
I can't wait to keep building community with you :)
I feel like the basic need and desire for connection was so highlighted by the pandemic in the mad rush afterward for people to go to live events. The overwhelming demand for live concerts, sporting events, etc (and the willingness to pay almost any price for tickets to these). Yet the movie business hasn’t really recovered fully, perhaps because sitting in a dark theatre, even with other people, doesn’t quite satisfy that same sense of connection and interaction as these other types of in person events do.
And it can be frustrating even when one is able to bring people together, such as for a dinner or afternoon drinks on the deck, that people are so often still on their phones even while interacting with others. This FOMO that has been ingrained and exacerbated by the tech companies and social media seems to have made it where people think even spending a few minutes interacting with someone else might mean they miss a meme or picture of what sandwich someone had for lunch. We have friends over to watch a movie, yet they are on their phones while the movie is playing … I’ve been considering a basket where it is mandatory they put their phones during the movie (or while we are playing a game, or during dinner, whatever) … and can already imagine the looks of sheer horror on their faces at the mere suggestion and possibility of being without their phones for a couple of hours (convinced the world will end, a friend or family member will be rushed to the hospital, an emergency will erupt at work, or Moo Deng will post the funniest meme ever, perhaps all of these things happening at the same moment, and they will be horrifically out of the loop).
There does seem to also be a related dumbing down effect this has caused, lack of, not just shortened, attention spans, yes, but also the growing inability to even be able to read and comprehend more than the length of a meme quote. Which, I wonder, might then contribute to the feelings of loneliness and disconnection because there’s a loss in being able to engage in sustained conversation and thought, making it less appealing (or more fearful) to be with other people.