Slow the scroll: Week 1 of mindful digital consumption

Brain rot was the word of last year, and I have not felt a word as strongly in a while. The moment Oxford announced it as the word of the year, I was re-looking my entire content consumption cycle.

Because this is the first week I am writing this, some context.

Growing up, I wanted to know everything. I wanted to be everything – an engineer, a doctor, an astronaut. Sometime during primary school, someone said that Knowledge was everything, so I would collect all of it.

But the wisdom of life, the limits of human absorption, the emotional bandwidth I have, have all taught me, that information has to be consumed, but also filtered, connected, and above everything else, put to action in your life.

It was an unarticulated thought building up since I moved to Chicago. What I knew, what I wanted to know, and what I needed to know were mutually exclusive subsets until I was removed from my environment and put in a foreign one.

When brain rot was announced, it felt that everything I had been trying to understand about consuming and creating information online had found an outlet.

Everything I had been saying about the mindfulness of social media consumption during my days in the Digital Humanities classes at Loyola University Chicago had come true. And like all good information, it was time to put all my studies and knowledge to action.

There are two things I did before starting to write this post.

  1. I cleaned up my digital spaces. Instead of posting mindlessly, instead of seeking validation, instead of creating ‘low effort’ content to keep up with the algorithm, I started to be intentional about what, and why I was posting certain things – whether on my personal, my p3 account, and which platforms I was posting them on. Instead of following every brand and creator there was, I started to be mindful about whom I liked and did not, whom I aligned with, who gave me the opposite perspective, and curated my following list. Instead of hitting ‘ilke’ on posts mindlessly, I started to watch the full video before giving a reaction. Like delayed gratification, delayed reaction also helped slow down the scroll.
  2. Focused and limited screen time. My cousin sister Mahek once remarked on seeing my desk, “Looks like Apple puked here.” My phone, laptop, iPad, and even Kindle were all lying there. Wasteful use of gadgets is the hallmark of our times. I wrote a sketch many years ago, in 2011, about a time-travelling doctor who had landed from the future to our times, and marvelled that all our innovations did the exact same things. And it was affecting my productivity, my focus, my retention. In trying to hustle and keep up with content, you would find me watching a movie on my iPad, while reading an article on my laptop and chatting with friends or scrolling Instagram on my phone. I did nothing well. In this stage of mindfulness, I started to operate one gadget at a time. If listening to a podcast, I would only keep the podcast on and a notebook in front of me. If I was watching a movie, I would keep my phone away, or look at it but pause the film. If I am reading, again, I would try and close all other tabs. This focus changed how I perceived information; and made me more mindful of what information was worth wasting time over.

This series of blogs is the next step in my #StopTheScroll journey.

I will record each piece of content I like, repost, quote, or share. I maintain a lessons document for myself for long-form educational content, but my Instagram, X, Reddit, LinkedIn scrolling still goes unrecorded.

Because I know it’s being recorded, I think I will be more mindful of what I am scrolling, and how I am spending my time in the digital ecosystems.

This week is going to be tough because I have to rely on memory. It’s good though, because it will be a proof of how much or how little I have retained, and what I have retained will tell me about what information I have a naturally tendency for.

Here goes, Stop The Scroll: Week 1, in no particular order

  1. I heard a podcast about marketing. It’s by The Whole Truth Foods, and I am skeptical of branded podcasts in general, but this one was interesting for a few quotable quotes, and a validation of why it makes sense for me to be working as a content marketer.
  2. I liked and read a lot of Instagram content around color grading, CGI, and VFX. For three months, I have been working as a communication consultant and internal journalist for Nube Studio, a leading post-production studio in Mumbai, opening up a world of creative exploration. I mostly scroll to understand the kinda of content being made and consumed under this keyword.
  3. After a long time, I reclaimed the functioning of Purple Pencil Project’s account. Honestly, I should have done that long ago, as well as the website. It’s my great regret, but not too dwell on the past. I sent out a bunch of collaboration requests for our International Mother Language Day campaign, started to follow and track keywords in our domain, felt impressed with the consistency of Amritesh’s personal Instagram which he has been working hard on after moving on from P3.
  4. Because of the #SharthPakki wedding, I was also on my personal Instagram quite a bit. I shared some stories of environment concerns, something about the new techno-political age that the 2020’s are turning out to be, and something about P3.
  5. I mainly watched the Korean show, The Interest of Love, a slow series about interpersonal romantic drama, office politics, and class circumstances that dictate civic life.
  6. Over the last few weeks, I have been setting up my personal office corner at home, and have spent excessive amount of time on e-commerce sites like Amazon. This week, I finally put an end to that, as I purchased all that I immediately wanted. The final result is so gorgeous, I cannot wait for the painting to be done, and the place to look complete. But I will start to record reels here before that
  7. I searched for, and then gave up, on reading about Michael Madhusudhan Datta, whose birth anniversary it was on 25th January, and on which I wanted to create a post, but got lost in the tabs.
  8. Some new songs on YT Music – Meet Me At Our Spot, a short clip of Justin Bieber singing ‘Stay’ live (a beautiful acoustic version that shows his vocal talent and deserves its own version)
  9. Inspired by Amritesh’s journey, I started to listen to Amit Verma’s podcasts. Two episodes in, and I realise that I need to do better as a listener. Thankfully, he started with shorter episodes so I have some time to train my ear
  10. Posts that stood out to be: DD’s posts, Amritesh’s posts on A Room of Words, a post about a wedding dupatta with family’s handprints that Bhabhi sent me, a few cat videos by Abha, a romance video by Mahek, the account ‘Poetyc’ which posts archives of Indian poets. These stayed with me.

This is all I remember. I know I searched for some definitions. “You the plug” (originates in hip-hop meaning either drug dealer or someone more generally well-connected and resourceful), “Edging” (where one partner flirts and keeps the other at a point just before sexual climax), the 405 Interstate referred to in a song.

I hope this act of revision makes my content consumption journey more meaningful.

I am now off to read Yasa Rasa Ta by Vinod Kumar Shukla, for the final session of the P3 Book Club before we move to another author.

Goodnight, and I hope you too #SlowTheScroll!

Want to talk more about it? I am on Instagram @madmillennialstories, on X @pramankapranam