I return to Max Read’s 2020 Bookforum review of The Twittering Machine often, because it makes a compelling case for the collective addiction to social media that goes deeper than the “dopamine addiction” model. In The Twittering Machine, writer Richard Seymour suggests social media addiction (and subsequent negative behavior on these platforms) is connected to the death drive. We don’t just check our phones incessantly and spend hours scrolling TikTok because our brains are on a dopamine high; we do it because we have a passion for wasting time. Halfway through the review Read wonders, “what if the reason we tweet is because we wish we were dead?” and my brain can’t help but echo the popular TikTok comment section refrain: real, real, real. It’s easy to make the case that we use social media in order to address some sort of lack in our lives. It’s a way to reach out to others, share ourselves, maybe even achieve fame or creative success. However, most of us know by now that this is rarely the true result of devoted social media usage. Seymour contends we continue to use these platforms even as they actively stand in the way of connection, productivity, and inspiration because self destruction is our actual, unconscious goal. Real life is disappointing, but for most of us not overtly, unbearably tragic or painful, and so we quietly resign ourselves to microdosing death in order to break up the aching monotony. The endless scroll allows us to access the same trancelike, death-adjacent space we enter when we sleep, or daydream, or, I don’t know, orgasm. The primary difference is while these petite morts tend to function as gateways into or out of deep feeling, the trance that accompanies being on your phone makes feeling impossible, and that’s the point.
Persinette, Less TikTok, More Screaming