Changing my relationships
Changing my relationships
COVID, Social Media, New Cool, Nose Piercing
I assume I must start by telling you why I disappeared in the last 2 months. December was an emotionally hard month and as I started coping with it, I had COVID in January. Since the last time I wrote a post, a lot of things changed. The last few months have made me challenge my thoughts, lifestyle and my connection with people. It was indeed a hard journey and it is still going on but growth often comes in these times.
In the middle of it, I started writing actively, I mostly wrote about my day and how I can make tomorrow better. At a point, I realized that it is easier to meditate or write when you are having bad days as you see those activities as a means to escape from negative thoughts.
I uninstalled Instagram from my phone long ago as I was wasting hours scrolling through reels and consuming mindless content. I must say, life has been much better after it. Now I open it as a browser and every time I want to post something, I have to do more work by opening it in developer mode, downloading the image to the laptop etc. This has reduced the frequency of posting and getting instant rewards and gratification. By not posting on any platform at all, the gratification is delayed. You stay more focused on the work at hand rather than showing off the half-finished work.
Meanwhile, I joined Twitter and initially, the community there felt amazing. It is still amazing but slowly, it reached an unhealthy dose of consumption and I started diverging from my aim. So what will I do? I’ll follow more people in STEM and unfollow those who provide no value to my feed.
While I was recovering, I started using my sister’s phone to look at reels and here is something I noticed: Kids as young as 13 are now making content that provides no value to society or to themself and are being exposed to fame very early, without putting in that years of hard work. Moreover, the definition of ‘Cool’ has been changed now. When I was in school, the guy/girl who used to make robots, be in science club, create beautiful paintings that were displayed during PTMs were considered cool and everyone wanted to be like that. I know students who took commerce and were a part of the astronomy club. That was cool.
Now, I rarely see anything like that happening. The ‘cool’ has shifted to making reels on viral songs. Is there any way we can again have the era where every young kid at least thought of becoming a scientist or astronaut irrespective of what they did in life after that?
A few days ago, I came across a reel on Instagram. The main speaker pointed out that TikTok in China is different from that in other countries. In China, the algorithm rewards the guy posting a video of cool engineering stuff, whereas in other parts nonsensical stuff is rewarded. If you want to destroy the country, you target the youth and this is a master move I feel.
In my school, we were rewarded for winning debates, quizzes, dance competitions, etc. Now, the world rewards something completely different. I respect those who still persist in their fields without worrying about the social media rewards.
So, do I not consume any content at all? No. I do. But of those who worked hard to develop their credibility in the field. Like Emily - the spacegirl, she is an aerospace engineer from MIT and now work on bringing science to teens and kids. Many people want to be science communicators these days but how many of them have actually done science? very few I would say. So, to conclude, be very conscious of the people you follow and the content you consume. There is a scarcity of those who did or do real work.
What am I up to these days?
The offline college has started and it is quite tiring but important at the same time.
Vizag is all set for MILAN 2022 and I’ll go with my mum to watch it on Sunday. (pics in next post :)
Getting back to lots of studies and aero stuff. Hard but again fun and important.
Spending a lot of time thinking about how to optimize time and energy more efficiently.
And oh! I got my nose pierced haha. Yes, I look amazing ;)
Let me know how you have been!
Seems like I have started liking Vizag now. The beach view is the best part about this city.
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Once I hit 1 Lakh INR (1333 USD) I'll give it away as a scholarship to support undergraduate women from India to attend her first space conference 🚀👩🚀