Doing a Lobotomite Run
The knifepoint embrace of innumerable claws
You shouldn’t use TikTok.
One of the only things separating you from the animals is your ability to choose what you pay attention to. If you’ve ever tried to train a dog, you’ll know; they’re so distractible!
In fairness, evolutionarily speaking, “responsiveness to the environment” is a really good feature to have, since most animals can’t reach their goals better by sitting down to have a think about it.
But you can!
ADHD isn’t real. Or rather, ADHD is the default state of an anarchic collective (a brain) without strong leadership (“you”). Yeah, of course it’s a mess in there; of course the internal experience is a lot of shouting in the House of Commons; each of the parts wants something and they don’t have much trust in one another or in your leadership.
(The recurring patterns in your interpersonal relationships are writ-large versions of how your parts relate to one another.)
Using TikTok or other scrolling apps atrophies the parts of your brain capable of giving direction; it trains you to route around the human parts of you, and outsource the job of “what will I pay attention to”, to Chinese spyware.
I vaguely expect that most peoples’ internal state, pre-meditation and frontally disinhibited, is a meaningful-mainly-to-the-thinker abstruse slurry (including my own)1.
But evolution gave you a prefrontal cortex for a reason.
You are in charge of your brain, hopefully. You can inspire, cajole, muscle, and otherwise lead all of your parts towards one goal. “ADHD” is what happens when different parts of you aren’t bought in that “what you’re currently doing” will lead to the stuff they each individually want. They try to grab the wheel.
“Your attention” is, in a significant sense, You.
The more you engage with infinite scroll and other abundant superstimuli in our environment and allow yourself to be dissolved into a state of perfect engagement, then the more you train those short, hedonistic animal circuits within you that there is DELICIOUS CANDY really just barely out of reach but available at all times.
This is not the best way to remain effective as anything other than a recumbent content vegetable.
Something like,
I SHOULD TEXT HER BACK SHE SAID SOMETHING ABOUT GETTING DINNER YOUTUBE IS ON FOR THE AUDIO IS THIS RINGING IN THE EARS MISOPHONIA WAIT I MEAN THE OTHER THING TINNITUS TWO TEXTS WHICH I’VE READ BUT NOT RESPONDED TO WHICH I’VE LEFT “UNREAD” AS A TO-DO TASK MULTIPLE EMAILS ARE THE SAME SLACK NOTIFICATION TOO QUIET NEED DIFFERENT MUSIC NEED TO REWRITE THAT CONTRACT SO I CAN HIT UP THE PRODUCER GUY ABOUT THE EROTIC REALITY TELEVISION ACTUALLY YOU SHOULD CHECK IN ON YOUR PROJECT LIST AND SEE WHAT’S BEING NEGLECTED THE GARGOYLE COMPANY NO WE HAVE REAL WORK TO DO THERE’S THE YC APP REMEMBER NIHIL SUPERNUM A BIGSHOT A BIGSHOT NOW WHAT DO I GET HER FOR CHRISTMAS I SHOULD REALLY DO SOMETHING WITH THIS API KEY IS MY WRITING CAREER GOING ANYWHERE THIS POST NEEDS BACKGROUND MUSIC OR SOMETHING THE MSI COVER IS GOOD THERE WE GO.
