By Stu In Summer 2002, Slingshot published an article against the growing social dependency on cellular phones. There were no dumbphones at the time — a flip phone was only considered “dumb” not due to the supposed technological superiority of other devices on the market, but instead because of the things it fostered: isolation, dependency on the state and large corporations, ecocide in the Congo and across the world (yes, folks were talking about this decades ago), and a lack of autonomy and critical thinking skills for whoever was unfortunate enough to get sucked into buying one. Today, the concept that a dumbphone would be “too much” for any consumer is widely considered laughable, if it is considered at all. Even in radical spaces, downgrading from a smartphone to something that has physical buttons and can’t access Instagram is just about the limit of peoples’ imaginations. What happened to the resistance to the steady invasion of these parasites into our lives? Have we been totally fooled? Well, yes. Maybe we can't be too hard on ourselves - the forces that have pushed these things on us and our communities are much, much bigger than us, and for better or worse the world has changed since 2002. The luddites of the early aughts did not have to get by in the world we live in today with its demands for efficiency, immediacy, and connectivity. Our social landscape has changed and with it so have our needs and challenges. But dammit, we’re anarchists! We are the self-proclaimed co-creators of the liberated world to come, fighting for all that is autonomous! And yet daily we sell ourselves out, sacrificing the very skills necessary to support our own individual autonomy. How will we liberate our communities from oppression if we can’t free ourselves from the most obvious and most optional mechanisms of capitalist psychological manipulation? It is time for us to reimagine the tech resistance. New ways of living must be found in our current version of the techno-hellscape if our movements are to be successful. Luckily, awareness of the issue is stronger than ever. People are disillusioned and want a way out, but we are all so deep in the shit that nobody knows where to start. Your ownership of a device, and its ownership over you, are all but a foregone conclusion. But there are some of us who have taken the leap of faith, and are here to tell you to fear not. It can be done! The below are a few critical learnings from my personal journey of ditching my smartphone and the journeys of others who have walked with me. This is not a guide to the best smartphone alternatives; these exist online if you look for them, but before you go shopping you must take a hard look at yourself and your needs. Everyone is different and the way is complicated. You will have to do the work, you will have to think for yourself. What a blessing! Ground yourself in Reality The things we think we “need” from our phones are not only available on a laptop or desktop computer, which has little to no hold over a person once they leave their home, but in fact these things are available with no computer at all, portable or otherwise. Your neighbor who has lived in your hood for 20 years knows their way around and can give you directions or tell you where to get the best burger. CDs are available by the pound at secondhand stores or garage sales, the radios still work, and your friends can play sweeter music around a bonfire than can be found on any streaming service. The most secure platform for discussing sensitive information is in person, on a walk under the sun. And that dull, ever present itch to turn off your brain and scroll for hours on end, well, it turns out that this isn’t a need at all, but is actually manufactured by the people who make the very devices you use to scratch the itch. This is the most important lesson for us to hold onto in our fight for freedom from tech* - the earth and the communities we build upon it have fulfilled our needs without the help of tech for time immemorial. This fact has not changed; it has just been obscured to us by the people in power. Kill your Shame, for it does not belong to you We all know the feeling, you’re just out of an hour-long doomscroll and can’t fathom why you keep doing this to yourself. You think of all the other things you could have been doing with your time, and yet you still don’t do them because you now feel like all the life has been drained out of you. You know that things could be different, and you know that this will happen again anyways. It is important that we recognize our relationship to our devices for what it is - addiction. People have been shaming addicts for generations. Anyone who has been to an AA meeting or is involved in harm reduction work knows that this simply doesn’t work - shame is not an effective mechanism for inspiring action to change behavior when it comes to addiction. Instead, non-judgmental support is required to help someone build themselves up to get out of the hole they are in. The same is true for the way we must talk to ourselves about social media and tech addiction. Shaming yourself for scrolling won’t get you anywhere. Corporations and the many thousands of very smart people they employ have been working for decades to make the most potent dopamine-release inducers possible. They know how the human brain works and (ab)use its weaknesses to their advantage, ensuring you will get sucked in again and again. If anyone should be ashamed of your usage, it is them. Do not shame yourself for a situation you did not create. Letting go of shame opens the door to love. When we see someone we love hurting themselves, we are inspired to encourage them to change. The same thing happens when we love ourselves — we start working towards change. Shame pops up in one other form that is important to address. When you give up the convenience that a smartphone offers, there will inevitably be times when you have to rely on those around you in ways you aren’t used to. Sometimes my friends have to buy concert merch for me because the seller only takes Venmo. Other times I have to ask a stranger for directions. I am known at work for asking coworkers on occasion to take job-related pictures for me and send them to my email. I have found that while some people do look down on me for this kind of thing, usually the strongest resistance I get is from myself. Needing the help of another, how embarrassing! I hate feeling like a burden to the people around me. But tell me this, what is really more embarrassing: being so bought into narratives of capitalist individualism that you are more willing to consult with an AI search bot for your problems than you are with another human being, or simply asking somebody to do something that will not take more than a minute, if that, of their time? The truth is that people want to feel helpful. Doing things for one another gives us satisfaction and gives us the opportunity to connect with each other on a material level. Strong communities are built on this kind of interaction. When someone has helped us in a small way before, we are more likely to feel comfortable relying on them in times of real distress, and they are more willing to accept the responsibility because they know us and care about our wellbeing. Communities die by a thousand cuts as we increasingly rely not on each other for our most banal needs but turn instead to our devices. Adjust your Expectations and Embrace Sacrifice In our culture, no altar receives such fervent worship as that of the god of Convenience. Capitalism and its goons have turned our bodies, minds, time, and experiences into something that can be bought, sold and stolen not only by nameless conglomerates but also by each other. Every second not spent “bettering” ourselves or producing in some way is considered wasted. Naturally then, we have developed an insatiable hunger for optimizing every aspect of our lives. We trim the fat of life, even though it is the very thing that keeps us warm. We always take the fastest route to get where we are going, even if another way is more pleasant. We order things online instead of going to the local store and are frustrated when our goods don’t arrive promptly, despite the thousands of miles that most products travel before they get to us. We have come to demand this same efficiency in our relationships, subjecting each other to a constant barrage of notifications informing us that somebody would like to claim our attention this very instant, no matter where we are or what we are doing. This simply will not do. Killing the corporation in your pocket means undergoing a process of letting go of certain conveniences. No longer will you have the entire digital world at your fingertips at all times. The portal between your pocket and those of your friends and family will grow narrower, with fewer avenues of interaction. My particular dumbphone is very slow to type on (although not all of them are). Texting, to most people, is supposed to be a totally stream-of-consciousness experience. So frequently, I am asked how I can deal with the slowness, how frustrating it must be! To this I say that I am not really texting, as most people have come to understand that term. It is more akin to writing an email or a letter - an activity that requires both attention and intention. I would not whip out my pen and paper in the middle of a conversation to draft a letter to my grandmother. Not only would I not be able to divide my attention adequately for the task, but it would obviously be considered rude to whomever I was physically present with. And when I do write letters, I am not frustrated by how slowly my hand moves across the page because I am focused on the task before me and enjoying it. This type of expectation adjustment applies to many of the daily interactions we have become accustomed to. You will start to expect others to respect your time and attention and will expect yourself to be more intentional with your communication. You will become comfortable with the responsibility of safely navigating yourself and others through the world via memory and asking others for directions. At times, you will get lost, you will miss an invite to a party that only went out on social media, you will have days where nothing good is playing on the radio and you are forced to sit in silence on your commute, alone with nothing but your thoughts. Through all this, you will become a more capable friend, lover, neighbor, parent, sibling, comrade. Others will have to adjust their expectations as well when you take the leap; for the people-pleasers among us this can be the hardest part. Eyes will roll when you say that your phone doesn’t do pictures, can they just show you in person or send it to your email instead? Some will be bothered if your response times begin to grow longer. They will still believe that they have a right to your attention at a moment’s notice, no matter what. You may have to explain to these people, lovingly, that attention is a finite resource, and by reserving it you are better able to give yourself to them during the time that you spend together. Some of them will continue to whip out their phones to send a quick text while you are speaking, and you will have to wait for them to finish to make sure they heard you. Over time, if not instantly, a lot of these people will see that you are in fact stronger, happier, more present and more capable without the computer in your pocket and the corporations that infest it. They will become curious, even jealous. After all most of us are looking for the same thing — a way out of this horribly dysfunctional situation we have found ourselves in. Together, we can find a new way of connecting, one that is both well suited to modern life and conducive to fostering healthy, autonomous relationships with each other and the world around us. *for the purpose of this article, “tech” is used to refer to corporate tech algorithms/platforms/institutions like social media, streaming services, and other digital "aides" rather than digital technology as a whole. Not all technology is bad technology!
The Slingshot Collective