A bit over a year ago, I wrote a piece on this blog called Opting Out of the Rot Economy. It attempted to lay out a personal struggle I’d been having with the attention- and intelligence-draining omnipotence of modern technology, and how I thought I might combat it. I’d watched, as we all did, how smartphones and social media altered and warped our politics, our relationships, our sense of self-worth, and – most crucially – how and where we spent the bulk of our days.

It’s probably a cliche at this point to moan about the “pod people” who surround us, glued to screens, but I think it’s become even worse since I wrote the piece. I literally can’t stand next to someone waiting for an elevator, for instance, without that person immediately becoming nervous and reaching for the safety blanket of her phone, even for ten seconds. What does she think she’ll learn in those ten seconds between me arriving and the doors opening? Nothing, of course, as there’s not even time to get into an app. It’s just cold, reflexive dopamine that her brain’s been rewired to crave when faced with a tough situation; it’s either that or attempt to live with a short period of potential unease.

It’s abundantly clear that humans in the aggregate have proven that we will take the path of least resistance when we’re offered a choice between easy, accessible, algorithmically-optimized entertainment & outrage – delivered via apps and tools that do the thinking for us – vs. having to continuously exercise, push and strengthen the miraculous brains we’ve been given by doing the heavy lifting ourselves. AI, the scourge of modern intellectual life while simultaneously the purported savior of modern profit maximization, is sucking in the gullible, the rubes and the bored even faster than social media did. It’s been marketed as a done deal, something we all need to get on board with, even as its parallels with the social media scroll we now rightfully decry are all too obvious.

It wasn’t even nine months ago when I was at a social gathering at a friend’s home, and one 60-something man was incessantly blathering to anyone who’d listen about how “ChatGPT planned our entire vacation for us – hotels, itineraries, routes, things to see. I didn’t have to do anything”. He was utterly delighted to unquestioningly follow the total wisdom of the machine, rather than his own research, and his own accumulated and hard-won knowledge & wisdom. Isn’t planning a trip – or not planning one, and allowing it to unfold serendipitously – one of the most rewarding parts of travel? It seems quaint today to vent my spleen about this anecdote, but it was the first time I’d actually seen the brain worms devouring an otherwise intelligent human being right in front of me.

Just like any slob who finds himself at the crossroads of “pursue fitness and healthy eating, or get fatter and unhealthier”, there’s a bit of work to be done to continually strengthen that phenomenal brain you’ve cultivated over the years, too. One has to actively choose to do it. Yet we’re surrounded by incentives that allow us to easily surrender this gift.

Screens, certainly. Those screens are now dominated by short-form video, which has become the dumbed-down method of storytelling for brains that can’t or won’t grasp text laid out in paragraphs. Even these videos – the “person walking and talking” or “influencer talking straight into the camera” are so difficult to follow for much of modern humanity that they now have built-in captions that glow and light up as the words are spoken. (I recognize that this thankfully often keeps the sound from someone’s phone from being played at top volume on the public bus). It’s pure rot and junk candy for brains that have been dulled into submission to the algorithm. I’ve therefore made it a “healthy habit” to completely avoid short-form video wherever I find it, whether it’s in the social media apps I don’t have; on the YouTube app I won’t open except to listen to a song; or on the New York Times site, as they try to desperately bend their narratives into storytelling that even their educated but aging, screen-addled readers might be able to follow.

In that post last year, I humblebragged about the “dumbphone” I’d bought and was switching to. Why, it turned out that I really didn’t need to change my phone, I needed to change me. Since there were too many apps on my iPhone I still needed for work, I held onto it, but I also found that by honing in only on what makes a smartphone useful and additive – and then using only those things – I was able to forego the all-or-nothing dumbphone strategy that had already started to frustrate friends who’d text me and then get a triple-tapped “OK” response.

Those apps are, of course, Google Maps – the greatest invention of our time – along with Gmail (careful how many times a day you open it, comrade!), Spotify and Apple Music, Mixcloud, Wallet, Google Calendar, and then random piffle like MLB, NHL, Wells Fargo, and The Athletic. Essential stuff of course, to be opened only when necessary. I’m sure you understand. Delete all the rest. Never, ever allow a notification. Block every incoming call you don’t recognize. Turn the phone off at 8pm unless you’ve got a kid out carousing. Problem solved.

And honestly, the JOMO that comes from not being on social media is every bit as powerful as the dopamine hits I used to get from being on it. When there’s some controversy du jour knocking about on Twitter/X or TikTok or what have you, I don’t know about it until someone writes an article somewhere. Every time I read one of those, I’m delighted to have it summarized for me, and know that I didn’t have to experience it in mind-rotting, day-wasting real time. I’m also still very much trying to be a “slow news” consumer, which means subscribing to a physical daily newspaper – NY Times in my case – and avoiding the online news as much as I can, save for some Substack newsletters, daily newsletters from The Atlantic, and from my various sports obsessions. That’s more than enough to read, and I have to say it feels pretty good to read a newspaper at 6:30am and finally see that big but ultimately unimportant story that people frittered away precious life hours nattering about on social media the day before.

I’m not a complete luddite. In fact, I’m not a luddite at all. I have retained the ability to be amazed at technologies that contribute to human thriving, such as medicines, vaccines and gene therapies, and even those that are just so wonderfully sci-fi, like the incredible, nearly accident-free Waymo and Zoox cars buzzing around my hometown of San Francisco without drivers. I still can’t believe we pulled that off, and that they work so beautifully. Mind you, I’ve never been in one and will continue driving my own car until they take my license away, but there’s nothing like crossing a street and having a robot car patiently wait ten feet away from you, vs. the Kratom-binging asshole who creeps forward, or who never saw you in the first place and blew right by.

I’m setting myself up for the digitally-minimized life I want going forward, one that’s blissfully ignorant of 95% of the rot economy. I am retiring from work in January 2027, and I hope to never breathe another word about AI or to pretend to be excited about it at work. I’ll actively keep my brain sharp by avoiding it wherever I see it. As tragic as it is to see a teenager whose life is lived entirely online, I find it even more upsetting to see the elderly succumb to social media, AI, and short-form video addiction, withering their already withering brain faculties down to a rough, confused nub. Both of my in-laws are struggling with advancing dementia right now. While it wasn’t digital addiction that hastened either’s decline, I know that I’ve been “scared straight” into keeping my own faculties as robust and discerning as I possibly can. When someone needs to know the name of the guy who was in that thing and immediately whips out a smartphone, I try and relay the important lesson I took from a scene in the film When We’re Young, when the Adam Driver character says “Let’s just not know”.

Since I’m keeping a smartphone and a handful of email newsletter subscriptions, what this means in practice is going analog everywhere else. Print books, lots of them. Staying curious and interested in written history, science, current affairs and (primarily) the interior life best illuminated in fiction. Analog records. There’s no AI slop music on analog records that I know of. Film in theaters and streaming on a large screen, rather than godawful short-form video packed into a handheld phone. Print magazines, the few good ones that still publish, when forced to wait for something or eat a solo meal, rather than a smartphone. Incredibly, I’ve found it’s also perfectly acceptable to do nothing additive at all beyond the act of waiting or eating!

In this, I believe I’ll truly opt out of the rot economy by and large, while keeping my brain healthily evolving and allow myself to experience the utter unbridled joy of not having to talk about AI to anyone ever again.