But enough complaining. There ARE some takeaways from this. And bright ones at that.

More and more, I see people voicing their need to [re]connect. Their craving for relationships. Their yearning for “genuine” bonds. Something that makes you feel full, that makes you think “ah, so this is what it means to be human”. Those impromptu, passionate conversations you have with strangers at a terrasse, those spontaneous tight hugs that say more than a thousand words. Those moments when you’re here, together, and say nothing, feeling the connection to the bone, because the emotional attunement is so strong, words are superfluous. 

Introducing experience as an act of resistance

So how do we make people learn how to “connect” again? Not in a ChatGPT self-diagnosis kind of way, but in a “for the first time in years, I did not think about anything else but where I was, who I was with and how I was feeling in that very moment” kind of way?

Maybe the answer isn’t to abandon technology, but to treat real experience as an act of rebellion. To choose presence like it’s a protest. To build community like it’s a strategy for survival.

Because if platforms are training us to forget what it feels like to be human, then it’s on us to practice remembering, together.

Offline experiences won’t fix everything, but they can stitch us back into the world, thread by thread. And when we feel the weight of our own lives again, maybe that’s when we start to feel whole. So instead of creating more places to scroll on, let’s open more places to show up. More excuses to gather. More things worth being present for.

If that’s so, then what does resistance look like when the problem isn’t just distraction, but a whole infrastructure that fosters disconnection?

I have a few thoughts on that - and I really think that these actions don’t need to be huge to be significant and meaningful. For me, it’s about reclaiming intentionality and depth behind the experiences you curate. 

Resisting by refusing to be everywhere at once

The above-described system strives on ubiquity: everything is streamable online, and the story of the experience becomes the experience itself. 

In response to this, perhaps resisting is just about letting things exist only where they happen. 

You can promote an event on social media before it happens. You can share a recap after. But while it happens? Refrain from live documenting it. Ensure that the experience you get is the experience of actually being present. If you weren’t there, you weren’t there, and that’s okay. A culture that allows you to “get the vibe” from afar erodes the value of presence. Scarcity isn’t exclusionary. In an overexposed system, it’s sacred.
Here, we try to reinstate the boundary between the experience and the image of the experience.

Reclaim experiences that are non-performative

In the system we evolve in, we’re conditioned to decorate our experiences for the camera. It becomes about looking good rather than having any actual inherent value. 

But maybe beautiful is not just beautiful by design. Perhaps, it’s the substance of what we offer that is beautiful.

Here, we’re talking about gatherings that prioritize conversation over décor. That value debate over aesthetics. That celebrates connection over composition. Making food taste good, not look good. 

An experience where the KPI is about what you felt, not the content you recorded. 

Because when you craft experiences that don’t beg to be documented, people stop performing and start participating.

This would reintroduce the idea of attending gatherings not because it ‘looks good’ to be there, but because you just genuinely ‘want to’ be there. And if you pause and think about it, when you want to be somewhere, you often forget about the pretty post you were planning on making so everyone can see. 

Return social media to its rightful place

As I said before, social media itself is not the enemy. We just need to keep it where it should rightfully stand in our life. A potent source of inspiration, a convenient tool for quick and easy information, and an efficient means of communication. It’s not about punishing yourself for using platforms. It’s about repositioning them as supporting actors rather than the director of your attention.

Here, rather than advocating abstinence or digital exile, I really want to highlight how I am simply trying to reclaim what is lived. The sensory, the unbroadcasted, the ephemeral.

It is resistance because it disrupts the economic logic of platforms: by reducing the production of content, you stop feeding the machine. And you start regaining free will and critical thinking.