THE SOCIALS & ART OF CONVO

I was interviewed on a great podcast last week and I touched on this during the interview so I decided to complete my thoughts.

On Cinco De Mayo I woke up earlier than I attended to. I looked at my clock and thought “I don’t feel tired, I slept good, cool. I can get some things done by 8am.” 

Plot twist. I didn’t get shit done. 

I laid in my bed for an hour and 30 minutes and I scrolled on my phone. I wish there was a counter that showed how many times I went back and forth between Instagram, Twitter, and Tik Tok. The number had to be absurd and a number I would be ashamed of. 

You ever trip off that you just scroll until whatever app you’re scrolling on tells you it’s over or when you come across the old shit you already seen? You just never stop on your own. You finally reach the end that’s when you get up and do what you were supposed to do 20-30 minutes ago.

Anyway, I went on with my day, tweeted during the day and the evening and when I was back in bed for the night I randomly thought “I spent 2 hours scrolling on my phone in this morning and I don’t remember anything I saw while scrolling.” For some reason that really stuck with me because my memory isn’t bad. It really shook me because it correlates to reality. It effects my day.  

Think about this. 2 people wake up in the morning. Person A scrolls through social media for 30-45 in bed then starts their day. Person B wakes up. Prays. Wash their face. Makes a smoothie to a fire ass playlist. Who you think has the better chance of having a better day? 

I’m not saying Person A can’t have a good day but the probability of Person B having a better day and having more consistency and a better week is higher than Person A. 

I realized if you can’t remember what you thought of that day that means you’re not consuming anything of value to your mind. Thoughts are supposed to leave an impression. If they don’t leave impressions, what you’re thinking about you don’t really care about which in conclusion means it has no meaning to you. It’s worth nothing. 

Social media is just mindless consumption. It’s like sugar. Sugar has no nutritional value. When you eat sugar it only stores as fat. It has no nourishment. It just makes you full. That’s social media 95% of the time. The other 5% you can learn and grow from but I had to ask myself how often do I see the 5%? 

I had to look at myself first and how I used social media and why I wasn’t seeing the good 5% often. I had to take accountability.

After 2 days of thinking I stopped checking my personal accounts altogether.

Social Media is just people talking but the talking don’t mean shit. Words with no meaning. I understood that I was apart of that. I was just talking too along with everybody else. 

I was on there talking about bullshit. Commenting on the same weird recycled topics. It’s just a world of male and females just talking and it’s in the 95% category of dumb shit. I’ll give you an example. You have men on there saying shit on social media like “My woman gotta be this, do this, cook like this, wear this, she gotta submit.” Man shut the fuck up. You don’t even protect and respect the women in your life now. Then you have women on social media saying shit like “He gotta fly me out, scam these dudes sis, cash me out.” Man shut the fuck up. You timid in real life and can’t even ask for what you want in real life but you online capping showcasing demands you not really asking for in reality to strangers. Fuck outta here.

It’s crazy cause I see men and women just talk online and promote a life they not even living. People co-signing shit that don’t align with their life. Constantly craving an audience to lie and perform in front of but who are you when you go to bed at night?  Who are you when nobody watching? Stop the cap, Just fall back, go to whatever your job is, go home, watch tv, lie on the internet, go to bed and do it all again the next day. Might have a drunk night somewhere in that cycle to feel like your life is lit but it’s only so long you can pretend. I knew shit was getting spooky when people don’t even travel for themselves anymore. They travel for strangers to see online. Why do we need a play by play of what you doing in Miami? Man fuck what every single one of us think (me included) and go enjoy that shit. 

I know people love to say “cancel culture” is ruining shit. I don’t give a fuck about cancel culture what I’m afraid of is groupthink. Groupthink is why all this shit is happening. That’s the shit you need to be worried about on social media. Groupthink is at an all time high and the reason why it’s serious is because it attacks individuality. If you practice individuality you are a villain. The moment you have a different perspective on anything you’re called all types of shit just because you didn’t jump on the bandwagon.

I’m not saying you can’t look at pointless shit on the internet. We need a bit of that. I’m not saying you can’t joke or have fun online. I’m one of the funniest people in real life and online. I love being goofy and playing around but you can tell the difference between jokes and people who just running their mouth and trying to impress followers. I don’t like fraud shit. Everyday I want the truth in as much of my day as possible and social media can’t really provide that. I had to step back from that shit.

Crazy thing about all this is that if you left social media you’ll realize “Damn I only have 3 real friends” but the beauty of that is 3 friends is all you need. The truth is nobody cares. All that “check on your friends” shit everybody be preaching is lies. Nobody checks on anybody. They’ll check their timeline before they’ll check on you. When you outta sight you outta mind and it makes you reevaluate your value to people but you gotta understand that nobody gone value you like you so you gotta keep it pushing. I check on people in real life. I’m really loyal in real life. I’m really supportive in real life. It all come from the heart too. No fake love. Ain’t no act. People check screens. I check on my people. Genuinely. Big difference.

Screens has everybody acting like zombies and that shit scary as fuck because our brains are not designed to consume at the rate we consume daily. The average screen time is 11 hours. THE AVERAGE! You know how fucking insane that is? It’s not just social media but media in general. When I was a kid when a show was over it was over unless I had it on DVD or VHS I’d watch more. After it was over I would go outside , draw, or talk to my family. 

Today one show ends, you have thousands of shows and movies to choose from at the click of a button on whatever you wanna watch it on. I’ve seen people take a hiatus from social media only to replace it with Netflix or Hulu and it’s sad because their mind can’t tell the difference. It’s all designed for our eyes to be on our screens as much as possible. 

After I stepped back from social media I went for a walk. I smoked a joint while on my walk and I made a point to not listen to music for 10 minutes. Just 10 minutes of hearing the sounds outside. I let my brain wander. Our brains are supposed to wander daily. It’s like a workout for your mind. I sat at the park and just thought about my creative work, my family, travel, comedy, doing future picnics and events, things that make me feel good. 

We live in this world of illusion & perception & the task is trying to find reality through all of it. It’s harder to find it in people cause as people we can hide things from each other but reality is something as simple like walking outside.  

I still run my podcast social media pages with my brothers and the one thing I learned from podcasting is that conversation is an art form. I have severe social anxiety except when I’m drunk. When I’m drunk I talk about myself all day and it’s sickening and selfish but my social anxiety makes it hard for me to do simple shit like say good morning or goodbye to people. I struggle with conversation. I’m not good at small talk and that’s why I hate it but small talk is needed. Small talk leads to intelligent and deep conversations. Small talk seemed like torture because I was looking at it with a small minded view. I have the personality and intellect to make any conversation interesting, so why can’t I make small talk the same? It’s because I was scared. 

I work a lot and I noticed the only time I have a real conversation is when I’m in The Dugout Studio with my brothers. Podcast or not we have real conversations every week. Outside of the studio I do not have any real conversations and it’s been that way for a long time. I take some blame in that so I’m not going to pin all the blame on everyone else outside of the studio but it really made me see how conversations aren’t held in high regard anymore. It’s just a few words said and then everybody face is buried in their phones.

When I get asked about my day I usually say one of these three words. It was good, okay, or boring and leave it at that. This whole week I’ve now started to share a thought I’ve had during the day. So if my day was uneventful I at least have a thought I can share and that can lead into a conversation. So for example if I thought about planning a trip to Hawaii I’m going to share that or if I thought about a new recipe I want to cook I’m going to share that. We all think about something so it ain’t hard to talk.

Last Saturday after I got off work I hit up my best friend and told him I’m a pull up on him. We sat and talked for hours and I looked up and it was 2AM. No phones. No binge drinking. Just 2 men talking about everything. It felt great and it set the tone for the next week. I made it a point to seek as many conversations as possible. If I was going to fight my social anxiety and anxiety in general I have to do things that make me uncomfortable.

I used to tell people never to FaceTime or call me randomly. Why? It’s because we love to hide. We’re scared. Anxiety. We always have to be comfortable but we have to do uncomfortable things to bring the best out of ourselves or we won’t improve. We’re comfortable talking on social media but when you have to actually speak forreal we run. I had to remove that communication barrier that I’ve had up for years. I just see it as people wanna hear my voice. I called one of my other best friends and talked for hours on the phone. The reason anxiety is so high in this country is because our phones and screens enables it. Think about when shit get awkward in public or if there’s awkward silence the first thing you’re going to do is pull out your phone and pretend to look at shit and run away from the awkwardness and your anxiety wins again and it’s never confronted. You default to what makes you comfortable. 

I’m not better than anybody. I’m not judging anybody addiction to the internet. We’re all addicted to something. I’m just speaking what’s real. I have no control over what anyone does and never want to but this last week has opened up my mind for the better. I’m back in shape. Gym 5 times a week now. Lost a lot of weight. Stayed away from alcohol for 10 days and counting. Eating way more healthier. I’m making more business moves. I’m learning new things. I’m not entertaining anything negative because I’m not seeing it. This is where it is and I’m not abandoning this feeling.

This past week is the most fun I’ve had in a while. Cheers to kiwi smoothies and 2 hour daily screen time averages. 

Peace, Benny