listing the different escapism strategies
thought i’d list out the different escapism strategies because whew, who doesn’t need some of those these days?? most of these are those that i have personal experience with but i’m sure there are more.
1. books!!! fiction books in particular. this is a classic. this is what everyone that was lonely did in middle school (me) and is a really good one. might not be that good for people that can’t see images in their head. for me when i read a really good book and i get really into it, at one point it doesn’t even feel like i’m reading anymore, it’s just a movie playing out in my head. i think a lot of us have lost this habit and have found other ways to escape the reality of our situation, but i’ve also seen a lot of people reverting back to their middle school habits during the pandemic.
2. tv-shows!! obsessing over a tv-show and bigning it is a common strategy for a lot of people. in like march/april of this year when i had school online (we’re back irl now but our cases are rising again which is worrying) i binged all of criminal minds, all 15 seasons, in about a month and a half. and i know my friends did the same thing. so binging shows is also a classic one. easier for people who can’t have images in their heads because their images are on the screen, but might also feel a bit more distant than reading a book.
3. movies. i feel like movies are harder to really escape to, unless it is a comfort movie, because you watch like two hours and then it’s over. if it’s a long series you might get up to 24 hours or more in total viewing time (lotr, harry potter, star wars, etc.) but then again they are often based on books and in my opinion it is easier to find an escape in books.
4. fanfiction. this is a good one if you have a book/show/movie/etc. that you really like and you want to explore more within that universe. there are so many different AUs to read, so many ships. there are a lot of really good sites. wattpad is often the start for many, but because of all the ads they have it isn’t enjoyable to read on there anymore. tumblr is good, often has good smut if that is something you’re looking for. fanfiction.net has stuff if you want to find a bit more obscure fics or if you’re looking for classics. ao3 is of course the queen amongst peasants. with a superior tagging system, a great warning system for triggers, as well as a huge user base, you can find ANYTHING you want here. (im talking anything, one time i found teletubbies smut, it was an experience) (i didn’t read it but it was there). ao3 is also good because you can often find a lot of y/n fics, and those are quite good if you just wanna feel like you’re dating your favorite celebrity or character.
5. music. music is always good if you’re in your feelings. there’s something for everyone and i think that no matter what genre you listen to you can find something that suits your current mood. you can also, if it is a somewhat popular artist or group, always take a deep dive into the fandom and watch all the content from when they started until now. that is what i did back in 2015/2016 when i started to listen to 5 seconds of summer. i watched all of their old videos and lives and EVERYTHING. i made sure i knew everything about them, like if i would have been a fan from the start. the thing about having music as an escapism is that personally i wouldn’t really call it that. for me, music (or the focus on the artist) is more of a temporary “obsession”. i put obsession in quotation marks because it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. i got into kpop in like february/march of this year and yeah sure i have no clue what i was like before kpop, but at least they make me laugh. kpop is also a really good way for someone to escape through music/artists. there is so many different groups or solo artists to listen to. you don’t even have to listen to kpop, there’s k-rnb,k-hiphop, k-rock. there’s c-pop and j-pop. (literally, like go onto kprofiles.com and you’ll see how much there is to see). no group sounds the same so you won’t get that issue either. the only thing you might have an issue with is if you want to be able to understand what they’re saying which you won’t unless you know korean (there’s always subtitles but from what i understand some people hate subtitles which i don’t understand at all). and you’ll always be able to find english translations of the songs, either on youtube or on lyrics sites.
6. social media. social media is a tricky one because on one hand you can definitely find content that offers an escape but on the other hand social media is full of the reality of our lives and therefore it might be hard. tiktok is good if you wanna feel like you’ve been on the app for five minutes when in reality it’s been 3 hours. for me tiktok is kinda bad, because when i get to the point that i spend hours on it every day my attention span turns into crap and i get really obsessed with it. always be careful with social media because there’s often a lot of toxic behaviour there too. i’ve seen a lot of people talk about how tiktok is turning into tumblr 2.0 (in a bad way) with (trigger warning!! thinspo, eating disorders, don’t read the next four lines) a lot of ed content as well as a lot of mental illness in general. i’ve seen comments like “time to not eat” on people’s tiktoks when the person has a “good” body (i.e. often skinny, and conventionally attractive). there’s also so much hate and insults there. as soon as anyone who is not necessarily attractive according to society’s standards, and they try to dance or they try to be funny, everyone in the comments are super mean to them. even comments like “as soon as i saw this i ran to the comments” are not nice. so if you’re gonna use social media as an escape please be careful.
those are all of the escapism strategies i can think of right now. if you have any others please reblog with them or add them in the tags!! and if you want tips on my personal favorite book series/tv shows/music groups let me know!!