Logging off
The big, basic, and controversial spell for leaving instagram.
I have been distressed by my relationship with social media for years now. The discomfort I feel when I use the app has increased exponentially in the last 5 years, and it has been both a somatic and spiritual dis-ease. My mind goes foggy while scrolling as time seems to evaporate. My spirit untethers from reality the more marketing and AI imagery I consume. Imagery of unending genocide sits next to ads for underwear. While Instagram used to provide me with a sense of community, now I feel my capacity for connection collapsing every time I use the app.
There is a deep urgency to be an active participant in this world, as we live through multiple genocides unfolding and inevitable climate collapse, but is social media helping us to be engaged and active community members at a time when relationship building is crucial? While the tension created by my social media use has continued to increase, its benefits to my life have continued to wane…
What once was a digital commons that created new connections and novel collaborative opportunities, has turned into a marketing burden with little-to-no redeeming outcomes for small businesses or creators. The truth is, we all have our own personal relationships with social media, with Instagram, but Instagram’s relationship with us is universal; the application is designed to exploit and co-opt our attention in order to control us and make them money. Meta has created a powerful social tool for manipulating our consciousness, and as we see the leaders of the organization take on more fascist policies (lack of fact-checking, and censoring LGBTQ+ communities, among others) their overall alliances and coercive tactics are completely transparent. The revelations behind the social media giant’s operations come at a moment when so many of us are deeply addicted to it. They have set us up to feel dependent on their platforms. It is not our fault. They designed this application to take advantage of us, to control our attention. The act of reclaiming our attention and time is revolutionary.
I am sincerely grateful for the friendships and opportunities I received from Instagram. I am grateful for the connections I have made there, and for the content creators who have shared so generously there. I have been able to build two businesses using the platform, starting in 2016 – and it was truly a boon for my work. What once was a place for community building has since turned into an echo chamber that thrives off of division. Over the years as a user I have noticed this transition. I have experienced direct harm from meta, and the ways it has trained its users to be trolls. I have lost good faith and my reputation has been damaged due to countless impersonators scamming individuals out of money by offering fake readings under my likeness. I have been traumatized by individuals attacking me for my political practices, when they were completely ignorant of my personal and public political stance and actions. My business has suffered, because I refused to bend to the content creation trends, in favor of honoring my own creative and intuitive process. It is high time I left this platform – and no it has not been easy.
When working through an addictive tendency, it is helpful for me to be completely honest with myself about how the addictive practice/habit/relationship makes me feel. Currently my relationship with Instagram…
Makes my MIND foggy, distracted, and overly stimulated. My mind on Instagram lacks capacity for depth. When I am constantly consuming the opinions and ideas of others, my critical thinking skills are diminished.
Instagram makes it easy to ignore my BODY. When I am using Instagram I am constantly consuming marketing; shopping for shoes, looking at recipes, eyeing new herbal products, beauty regimes, ways to improve myself – rather than sitting intentionally with what my body needs in the flesh and blood. Instagram makes my body bend to believe that it needs what other people are selling/feeling/experiencing.
SPIRITually Instagram invaded my psyche in ways that are intrusive and distracting. My dreams were once spinning on a carousel of an instagram feed. My ability to have clear intuitive downloads was interrupted by a nagging sense of distraction. Flashes would come, but they didn’t take root since my connection with my body and earth were so disrupted by the attention hoarding IG entity. I found that my spirit was seeking approval, when its organic state is to operate in loving trust.
{This could be a tarot spread. How does IG impact my MIND, BODY, SPIRIT (pulling a card for each aspect of self)?}
As I move off of Instagram, I am vowing to heal the fractures in my relationship with body, mind, and spirit caused by the IG algorithm. In doing so, I am not only reclaiming my attention from meta, but I also reclaim my creativity, my magic, and fortify my spiritual center. Witches have been weaving and web building throughout time without social media, and doing so throughout periods of immense persecution. I vow to become more authentic in my politics, in my artistic practice, and in my spiritual devotions. Without Instagram, I claim spaciousness to explore, to enjoy, and to cultivate greater kinship with a wider circle of humanity.
My leaving social media spell invokes the wisdom of The Magician. In an esoteric sense, the Magician is all about concentration, our ability to focus our will. The Magician helps us to reclaim our attention, to refocus on the tools, skills, and creative modalities that allow us to practice our authentic magic.
The tools on my Magician’s table include pen & ink, to draw circles, zines, and spells that forge new connections. I also have a spade & seeds for the community garden where I am growing food alongside my neighbors, and growing flowers for the library up the hill. I ground this work in a network of roots – the friends and collaborators and supporters that are here, deep in your own processes of unplugging from social media, supporting and creating in solidarity with each other. My voice is a tool in this work, a voice that will not be silenced or shamed or restricted to behaving a specific way for a specific outcome.
I have already been dramatically pulling back from social media, and the effects are liberating and comforting. I log on to the app maybe twice a week for about 10 mins at a time. This is a massive reduction for me, and I have been delighted by the side effects. Leaving social media has rerooted me into a more present time and space, less urgent and interrupted, more embodied. I am walking around my neighborhood without my phone, admiring the towering oaks and birdsong. I am spending time getting caught up in my creative resistance, actively working through my own blockages with prayer, divination, and play. I reach for my phone less. I am less tethered to an imaginary place, and more awake to the needs of my body, mind, and spirit.
As I make the big and potentially bold decision to leave social media, I am noticing how much better I feel, the more I psychically unravel myself from that space. Sure, there are ways in which leaving social media makes running a small business more complicated, but the benefits to my personal humanity – to my quality of life – outweigh the ways that Instagram felt central to my business. In fact, the less time I spend worrying about social media, the more energy I have to dedicate to the practical, complex, interdisciplinary, spiritual, and inspiring aspects of what I do. The more we pull our attention away from Instagram, the more ways we may be able to reskill. The world needs more dreamers, guardians, volunteers, caregivers, gardeners, scientists, peace-makers, mediators, good listeners. What are you choosing to reskill towards? Humanity, or isolationism?
This is my breaking up with social media spell in a nutshell: (These spell notes are intentionally vague, so you can do you! Add incense, music, something delicious to train you away from your social media addiction, and towards joyful resistance.)
Map out how social media makes you feel right now. The good and the bad. Notice how it affects your body, mind and spirit.
Center back into what you want to feel, at your most empowered, embodied, and abundant, as a witch, creative, business owner, and straight up human being.
Draw a circle around everything you are centering and protecting in your life right now. Do this on a notecard, or piece of paper that you can place on your altar.
Pull the Magician out of your tarot deck, and place them next to your sacred circle of empowerment. Say a prayer that affirms your visions and dreams.
Everyday, before going onto social media consciously connect with your circle, and drop into the wisdom of The Magician. Give less and less of your precious attention to the algorithm. Give more and more of your energy to the things you are working on embodying.
Relish in the spaciousness and creative opportunity that builds.
THINGS TO DO INSTEAD OF GOING ON INSTAGRAM:
Write a letter.
Organize your photo albums. Print your favorite photos.
Make a zine and share it.
Read a book.
Watercolor.
Make a protest sign.
Learn to embroider/knit/quilt.
Drink a big glass of water.
Stand outside and listen.
Talk to a neighbor.
I have been fortunate to work with the wonderful
of Softer Sounds Studio and the “Off the Grid” Podcast – definitely go check out their work if you are unfamiliar. They helped me immensely in gathering the courage to leave social media. As I was working with Amelia on organizing the Modern Witches ✨ Podcast, she suggested that I record an episode on this topic, and I was grateful to have a magical conversation with Liz Migliorelli and Edgar Fabián Frías on how leaving social media has played a role in their magical/spiritual journey. The episode isn’t out just yet - but stay tuned for the conversation!