This past September, I was catching up with some dear “summer camp” friends of mine in a pub in the financial district of downtown Toronto. The sort of place where it’s a bit dark and dingy and you hope their drinks are on special so you don’t have to pay full price at this place. I spent the entire evening quietly distracted by a large, unmovable screen sticking out of the centre of the table, playing looping videos of commercials and movie trailers. What sort of late-stage capitalism are we in where I can’t have a real-life conversation with friends without being subjected to in-my-face advertising? So, after wrapping up an otherwise delightful evening with my friends, I found myself overthinking about all the media I saw everyday, whether I wanted to or not. I sensed that the dumb screen on a table was essentially doing the same thing to my brain as the modern big social media platforms I used every day. While all I wanted was to engage with my friends' posts and comments, I was being inundated by total rot - from bots to edgelords to eager self-improvement bros to beauty gurus. I got stuck on the question:

who am I when I’m not on big social media?