Shh, I'm talking.
If you’ve never complained about something, you will find trouble relating to an Idiots Rant. You may find it confusing or disheartening. Also, you are a liar.
Don’t be alarmed. I assure you, ranting and complaining is an excellent method to sort your thoughts. At least, perhaps the start of sorting them. It's also a great way to reach catharsis without paying for Theatre tickets.
While I intend to complain, argue, and validate my own opinions without due diligence, proper research, or consultation, I will also point out that complaining is a great way to line up distaste in life, things, or whatever else comes to mind. Once you line it up, pour it out, and sort it out you can tackle solving the problem.
So, rant. Do it however you like. Whichever method grants you the most relief, go for it. Start from worst and most horrific things to things that are kind of just a nuisance. Sort it from constant unbearable irritation, to mild discomfort once a year.
I use the word 'sort' specifically because I want you to think about it that way. The key to a rant is a very faint, thinly drawn line between scrambled nonsense and a linear train of thought. Find it.
It's incredibly easy to be irritated in our lives. Constant vies for attention by work, technology, and everyone wanting you to know what they think about the most recent news or trend. All of that garbage piles up over time. Some significantly faster than others. Sometimes the things you like are in short supply, so you see more of the shit you don't like.
You don't typically have real1 choice about what you hear or see. You'll see stories about the latest stupid, weird or just fucked up thing and your friends will ask your opinion on it. But maybe you don't have one. Or maybe you're a real human being and you recognize that nobody actually cared about the thing that happened and it's just another story to get attention and renown on media platforms to raise even more money and budget more ways to get your attention and watch more advertisements on their website as you scroll through endless videos of people doing the exact same thing over and over while they pretend to care about the aforementioned story. ({ welcome to the first rant of an idiots rant}) Now. Before you say "Well, Nate, you could just not use social media" hear me out first; Shut the fuck up. You and I both know that's not a realistic option. It is. But also it isn't. So Shh, I'm talking.
I already have solved this issue for myself. But I'm going to use it as an example as to why I think complaining is important. Specifically why ranting is so valuable. I stated how I was annoyed by the constant calls to attention. O.K. Simple. By complaining and ending up on a little rant, I found one source of the issue; being drawn to watching or seeing too many things I don't like, BECAUSE I don't have a lot of choice in what's popular or trendy. Don't get technical on me and start talking about how social media platforms use API's, AI's, and Grandma's moon pie recipe to help cater to your interests. I don't care. I want to see new things, if I didn't, I would just search for the fucking keyword of the thing I'm interested in.
Anyway, it's about the process you go through when you rant. You complain and get mad. BUT, do you know what a rant almost always ends with? "Maybe I should just stop this thing." Ah, yes, now we are getting to the point. But wait, I can't just not go to work anymore because Sally has a weird way of breathing. And no, you can't solve that by stopping it. I mean you could, but you shouldn't. Something about ‘the consequences of your actions-’ Regardless, let's move on. Like I said, we want the annoyances to stop. But we can't shut ourselves out from everything. So we really have 2 options. Suffer forever, or start taking steps to mitigate annoying things. When it comes to social media, I took special time to pick out things I don't like. Specifically, I took note of which media platforms gave me :) or :( more. It was actually very easy. You see, like I said, most popular platforms will cater to your interests with various innovative technology. Sure, I think that's great, but it also means that it's really annoying when the dipshit "smart" app decides you're interested in toilet seats because you bought one on amazon last week. Don't try to tell me about clearing cache, history, private browsing, VPN's, encrypted network traffic, Tor Browser. I know all about those things. Being completely anonymous, hyper cyber-secure, and unflagged by shopping algorithms is all fun and games until you have to buy 3 different locked notebooks to keep your passwords in because you can't trust technology to keep them safe anymore.
Back to my point; you gotta stop. Pay attention to what you're doing. How many different media apps are you using? If your answer was "idk" you have a problem. Remember when mom and dad said something about moderation? You should try it. Figure out which social media platform you get the most out of. For some of you, it's probably 3 or 4 apps tied right at the top. Pick one or two to drop. Don't be so rash as to delete your account. Just leave it alone, use some of that will power you think you have so much of. Here's something; you will feel the draw back to those apps and accounts. You'll want to open it. You may even do it without thinking. Boy, that sure sounds like it was a healthy habit.
You'll likely find yourself on the app you chose to keep more frequently than you used to, trying to make up for the others being absent. Why is it sounding like you're coping with loss? Now, without providing you any evidence, listen to this: If you limit your social media to 1 or 2, you'll hopefully start to get bored of it at a quicker pace. You should find less of the annoying shit popping up as well. Why? We are biased to things we don't like. We see more of it and we remember seeing more of it. So when you switch between apps over and over you will undoubtedly see repeating trends, maybe even the exact same videos or post being republished. When we see posts we like more than once, we really just glance over it, or watch it again with no mental comment about it. However, when we see a post we don't like, we slide back into consciousness from our hazy cloud-ride down stimulation lane. We think "ugh, this is stupid" or "why would anyone do that?"
I make my point by emphasizing that you are less likely to run into repeat posts when you limit your exposure to a smaller portion of the social media world.
Sure, you could just do that without complaining. But it's not about jumping straight to the actual result. It's about the process and it's applicability to other kinds of issues.
I plan to write and rant and complain on this blog page thing. No I won't do my research. No, I won't take the time to edit, proofread, or care about the cohesion. I'm ranting, it's a process, and it's helpful. Yes, I am probably a hypocrite. Here's the thing though, I will complain, rant, swear, get mad and do all that annoying stuff I tell other social media people not to do. The difference though is I don't stop there. After the rant, I look at it. Gain insight on the source of the problem and start taking steps to mitigate it. Improve your own way. This one is mine. And it works.
In that you have interests, choices. You could give up things. But we aren’t born to be outcasts. We want to be involved. To be involved means to, well, be involved.