The privilege of logging off

We’re raising a divided generation.

Embedded is your essential guide to what’s good on the internet, written by Kate Lindsay and edited by Nick Catucci.

If I ever fall off the face of social media, it’s because things have gotten better, not worse. —Kate

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How I worry I’m being whenever I’m not checking my phone.

Almost every writer I speak to has the same goal: be successful enough to never have to go on Twitter again. Or Instagram. Or TikTok. Or wherever it is they currently spend their days in an endless cycle of self-promotion in order to keep their careers afloat. Even as someone who writes about social media for a living, I can’t pretend that I don’t fantasize about achieving enough success to Log Off. 

But a few weeks ago at the Future Commerce Visions Summit, where I participated in a panel along with Hitha Prabhakar, keynote interview

Alison Roman

all but dashed those hopes. I’m paraphrasing, but she remarked that, at this point in her career, she, too, assumed she’d no longer be a slave to self-promotion and the algorithm. And yet, even with three cookbooks, a successful newsletter, YouTube cooking show, and corner store upstate, these things are just as necessary as when she first started. 

This reality mostly applies to creatives. Being a writer, artist, musician, or personality is predicated on branding yourself. Unless you’re Emma Cline and can get a $2 million book advance while posting twice a year on Instagram, you need to keep showing up, producing, and growing—or fall out of the zeitgeist. To not need to do so is a privilege, and while right now it’s one that only belongs to the handful of writers whose social-media free existence keeps my fantasy alive, soon, I think, logging off will be a privilege that eludes almost everyone.