Block Everyone Everywhere

29/5/25

Oh my god just do it. You want to? I know you want to. I know you’ve seen those texts coming up on your phone, while in you’re in the shower, in the middle of work, just as you’re finally about to get to sleep past midnight, and you’ve had to hold the phone up close, hot lights searing your eyes even more than they already have, just to see someone asking for your attention, nothing important, they just feel like they have the right to you at all times, and you’re through to yourself, ‘how is this supposed to make my life better?’

We, as a species, were not made for constant access to one another. The metaphorical eyes that I used to feel on me when holding my phone could’ve gotten me access to the psychological assessment that I’d wanted for years, and I’m a little pissed that I don’t feel the same way now. I want to throw this thing in a lake.

But you know why I don’t feel like this anymore? Simple. I blocked everyone, everywhere.

Well, sort of, more or less. I know we’ve all seen the same ‘phones bad, slow stuff good’ essay a million times over by now, but, fuck, it’s still true. My phone made me claustrophobic in high school. Nobody was happy in high school, no? What an awful time for us all. Have I ever mentioned that person who once spent 23 hours on Twitter in a day? Nightmarish.

In high school, I was the most difficult person to contact outside of school hours, allegedly. I imagine this was because I didn’t use social media (i.e. share my accounts), nor did I allow push notifications on my phone. I’d still get texts, though, and Discord messages, and Instagram DMs, and I’d be expected to respond to them… pretty much instantly, I think. Maybe it’s some sort of mental illness, since most people seem to be coping well with this, but I could almost never find the capacity to respond to messages instantly. Even the knowledge that I could receive a message at any moment would put me on edge to the point where opening apps intimidated me.

An app! I got scared of an app. There does not exist an app that is worth this hassle.

I don’t know where the horror of instant connection ends and where my personal problems start, but I know that it caused me way too many problems. The pressure to be present 24/7 wore down my capability to exist around my friends in school (albeit in addition to other issues, most likely) and this affected my desire to be around them at all, both long and short term. Hanging out became a chore, because I know that I could never truly escape it. If I missed a meetup, or a day in school, My phone would explode with messages that I would never have an excuse to ignore. You feel like the whole world is watching you.

A little while ago I saw a short post by someone aged around 29 making an observation on the younger generation, noting how odd it was to receive an apology for responding to a message 12 hours late. They said that this is a wildly short length of time to wait and unneeding of an apology. I wasn't the politest post, to be honest. While there is probably room there to speak on how older generations blame youngers’ behaviour on their own moral failings and not on their environment (because there’s way too much of that from Millenials, especially while they’re aware that 1984 is pretty much all Gen Z/Alpha have ever known), it’s best to focus here on the fact that, yes, it is unusual to apologise for making someone wait less than a day for your attention. But that’s how things are now! You’re not allowed to take more than a few hours after being sent a message to get back in touch, your devices show you if someone has read what you sent, all your apps need be linked to one another to the point where you can’t even listen to music without people watching, and we’re all supposed to be okay with that, for some reason.

I swear, sometimes I feel like the only person who has an issue with this? I’ve never seen a soul mention this little thing that has actually turned out to be a pretty huge thing for my life. Are we all okay with this or are my feeds gaslighting me? Am I just weak?

I’m struggling to find studies that focus on instant connection, furthering the idea that I am the odd one here. If I had any on hand, they’d be thrown at you all the way through this post. I wouldn’t mind some emails with a couple links. I have, however, found plenty of articles on how they affect business operations, of all things.

But what about me? What about my feelings, and how the move for monetisation of addictive apps has impacted the way people interact with me? Why should I have to endure my relations being damaged by the way instant gratification has dissolved the brains of every fucker on earth? So someone else can get ad revenue? This is horseshit.

I didn’t ask to live like this!

I want to be able to take care with my messages, and go about my day like a person, without having to worry about missing anything important because I went somewhere without WiFi only to come back to being berated for leaving someone for a day, god forbid.

This doesn’t happen to me anymore, but it doesn’t happen because I couldn’t bear having any friends within this environment. They hardly viewed me as having a life because I didn’t post online every hour. And sure, I do keep to myself a little more than I probably should, but that’s largely because my only other option was to keep myself open to the constant overload of attention from people you’re already trapped with every single day.

We weren’t built for this! This isn’t healthy. I’m tired.