Never Post

Georgia talks with beauty reporter and critic Jessica DeFino about the capitalistic excesses of
“self-care” online; Mike talks with Today in Tabs’ Rusty Foster about logging off. Also: UNBOXING.

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Intro Links
  • TikTok CEO meets with Trump while asking for Supreme Court to take up ban appeal – UPI
  • Hawk Tuah Haliey Welch's Crypto Team Nets £2.59M Amid Botched Token Launch, Fans File SEC Complaints – IBTimes
  • Researchers Consider the Relationship Between Misinformation, Outrage, and the Sharing of Content on Social Media – TechPolicy
  • Online influencers need ‘urgent’ fact-checking training, warns Unesco – The Guardian
  • Teens, Social Media and Technology 2024 – Pew Research
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The Horrors Persist, But So Do The Little Treats

Find Jessica:
Segment Links:
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Touching Trail

Find Rusty:
Most of the TikTok users (64%) and almost half of the Instagram users (48%) were prepared to pay to be off them, so long as others were off them, resulting in average valuations across all users of minus US$28 for TikTok and minus $10 for Instagram.

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Never Post’s producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and The Mysterious Dr. Firstname Lastname. Our senior producer is Hans Buetow. Our executive producer is Jason Oberholtzer. The show’s host is Mike Rugnetta.

NoOne kneads us again of earth and clay,
noOne conjures our dust.
Noone.

Praised be thou, NoOne.
For your sake we
want to flower.
Toward
you.

Psalm, by Paul Celan 
Trans. Pierre Joris

Never Post is a production of Charts & Leisure
★ Support this podcast ★

Creators & Guests

Host
Mike Rugnetta
Host of Never Post. Creator of Fun City, Reasonably Sound, Idea Channel and other internet things.
GH
Producer
Georgia Hampton
Producer
Hans Buetow
Independent Senior Audio Producer. Formerly with Terrible, Thanks for Asking and The New York Times
JO
Producer
Jason Oberholzer

What is Never Post?

A podcast about and for the internet, hosted by Mike Rugnetta

Mike Rugnetta:

Friends hello and welcome to Never Post, a podcast for and about the Internet. I'm your host, Mike Rugnetta, and this intro was written on Tuesday, December 17, 2024 at 8:49 AM Eastern. We have a dreamy show for you this week. In our 1st segment, Georgia, talks with beauty industry reporter and critic and author of the newsletter, The Review of Beauty, Jessica Defino, about what has become of self care online. In our second segment, I talk with Today in Tabs chief tab collector, Rusty Foster, about his recent hiatus to walk the Appalachian Trail and what it's like to log off.

Mike Rugnetta:

Imagine that. Also, some of our favorite holiday unboxing videos. But first, let's talk about a few of the things that have happened since the last time you heard from us. I have 5 stories for you this week. TikTok remains on the chopping block if the social site is not divested from its Beijing based parent company, ByteDance, by January 19th and sold to a national concern it will be banned in the US with fines levied on any service that provides access.

Mike Rugnetta:

CEO, Hsiu Chu, met with incoming president Donald Trump to make a case for reversing the measure, to which Trump apparently responded, you know, I have a warm spot in my heart for TikTok, according to United Press International. TikTok has asked the Supreme Court to take up its case on grounds that the ban violates free speech, saying in their filing, quote, if Americans duly informed of the alleged risks of covert content manipulation, choose to continue viewing content on TikTok with their eyes wide open, the First Amendment entrusts them with making that choice free from the government's censorship. If the DC Circuit's contrary holding stands, then Congress will have free reign to ban any American from speaking, simply by identifying some risk that the speech is influenced by a foreign entity. These days, I am not so sure how many Americans I would describe as being duly informed. Haaktou Girl, Hailey Welch, could be in legal trouble, reports the International Business Times, over the recent launch of her meme coin, HAWK, marketed as a kind of access pass to giveaways for Welch's growing media complex.

Mike Rugnetta:

At its peak, the coin was valued at $500,000,000 but it tanked quickly. Bubble Maps, a blockchain visualization service, reports that only a small percentage of coins were held by fans and nearly 20% held by early investors who offloaded immediately upon launch, which sent the coin into a free fall, devaluing the investments of those who weren't racing to sell. Welch and her team profited over $3,000,000 via processing fees. IB Times reports that quote, disgruntled fans have filed complaints with the SEC, accusing Welch and her team of fraudulent practices. What?

Mike Rugnetta:

A judge in California recently ruled that WordPress owner, Automatic CEO, Matt Mullenweg, must reinstate access to wordpress.org for WP Engine, a WordPress hosting provider with whom Mullenweg has been feuding protractedly. Mullenweg will also have to disable a number of WordPress features aimed at identifying any way associated with WP Engine. Mullenweg tweeted that he was quote, disgusted and sickened by the outcome, continuing that this is a quote, dangerous precedent that should chill every open source maintainer. WordPress powers some 40% of the web and was launched in 2023 under a GPL license. Automatic, the commercial side of Mullenweg's business was launched in 2,005 to provide hosting among other services.

Mike Rugnetta:

A new paper published in Science details how the outrage caused by misinformation online sparks people's willingness to share that misinformation. Science editor, Ikiyoma Uzugara, writes about how, quote, across platforms, McLaughlin et al examined the role of emotions, specifically moral outrage, a mixture of disgust and anger, in the diffusion of misinformation. Compared with trustworthy news sources, posts from misinformation sources evoke more angry reactions and outrage than happy or sad sentiments. Users were motivated to reshare content that evoked outrage and shared it without reading it first to discern accuracy. End quote.

Mike Rugnetta:

Of course, true and trustworthy news sources can also provoke outrage, but misinformation is often designed to do so. The timing of this is interesting given recent warnings from UNESCO that social media influencers are in urgent need of fact checking training, given quote, 6 out of 10 creators said that they had not verified the accuracy of their information before sharing it with their audience, writes Guardian, continuing, while the research found that creators generally didn't use official sources such as government documents and websites. End quote. And, finally, the teens love YouTube. This, according to Pew Research, who just published their report on teens, social media, and technology in 2024, they report that 90% of teens aged 13 to 17 use the video sharing platform, with 73% reporting that they are on it daily.

Mike Rugnetta:

15% almost constantly, and 39% several times a day. TikTok is a close second, row row, with 63% of respondents reporting frequent use and Instagram not far behind. At the bottom of the list is X, 17%, Reddit, 14%, and the Internet's hotel lobby bar for brands and influencers threads at 6%. In show news, you've probably heard, we made an audience survey and we would love it if you filled it out. There's a link in the show notes, and you'll get to tell us about how you think we can improve the show, what you love, what you don't, and you can also tell us which producer you think is the nicest.

Mike Rugnetta:

Just kidding. We all know it's Hans. Survey link in the show notes. No sign in required. Totally anonymous.

Mike Rugnetta:

It works great on mobile. It takes 10 minutes or less and we will love you forever if you write in. It's available until January 1, 2025. So get on in here and tell us your opinions. You love telling us about your opinions.

Mike Rugnetta:

You have so many and we wanna hear them. Now's your chance. Alright. That's the news I have for you this week in our first segment, Georgia on self care. In the second, me and Rusty shouting

Mike Rugnetta:

log off

Mike Rugnetta:

at one another. But first, the bike shaped present under the tree. What could it be?

Clip:

I'm only trying to find Hold on. You wanna open that up? Wait a minute. What the fuck? What the heck?

Clip:

What the heck? Did I get the wrong one? We don't have a Super Nintendo. Both putting your game on. No.

Clip:

It won't go to Ryan, maybe it will. Oh my gosh. Good one, dude. Beautiful. I don't believe it.

Clip:

How nice, papa? We're running that one. Oh my gosh. I can't believe it. For both of you guys.

Georgia Hampton:

What is your definition of self care?

Jessica DeFino:

I I think the the big thing to focus on with self care is the word self, which we often confuse with, surface or body. And, like, sure, your body is part of yourself, but it's not your whole self. I think probably a a good old fashioned way to think about the self is mind, body, spirit. And if we're talking about self care, probably all three of those things need to be addressed, in tandem. The basic self care things are boring.

Jessica DeFino:

They are, you know, feeding yourself, sleeping, taking quiet time throughout the day, things like meditation or those kinds of just like super simple things that don't cost any money and don't really take much time. They're things you like kind of have to do anyway.

Georgia Hampton:

That's Jessica Defino. She's a beauty culture critic who writes the very good newsletter, the review of beauty. I talked to her about how it feels like the idea of self care has been taking over the Internet in this specific way that she's actually covered in her newsletter. But first, I wanted to get her sense of what the concept of self care means.

Jessica DeFino:

The end goal of self care is probably the goal of living. Right? To take care of yourself is to make sure that you are living your version of what your best life might be. So I I tend to think of self care almost collectively and what is going to lead to human flourishing. And a lot of those things will be, you know, more individual focused for your own mind and your own body, but a lot of, like, what it will take for you to flourish as a human is also going to be collectively focused and community focused in what kind of world you need to live in in order to flourish.

Jessica DeFino:

Basic things that I think in the conversations of self care which can tend toward the pretty, luxurious and privileged, we tend not to think about. But that is, like, on the most basic level what self care is, and it and if my self care doesn't include helping other people achieve basic self care of just like food, shelter, community, things like that, I don't think it's worth very much.

Georgia Hampton:

The person often referenced in regard to self care is the activist and writer Audre Lorde, who in her essay collection A Burst of Light wrote, quote, caring for myself is not self indulgence. It is self preservation, and that is an act of political warfare. As the broader culture learned about the idea of self care, the general interpretation of that quote and the concept behind it has been that it's a radical thing to do something generally nice for yourself. That could mean a bunch of different things, but often, it started to mean getting yourself a little treat.

Jessica DeFino:

Let's do a little self care haul of the things that I got that I'm gonna use tonight because we just got back from 3 weekends

Clip:

of festivals. It's definitely a collective self care haul and from all kinds of different stores.

Georgia Hampton:

I've been feeling down about myself and it's just not cool. Like, it's not cool. I need to feel pretty, so I spent way too much money instead. So I went to Sephora and Ulta.

Jessica DeFino:

I think if we look at media depictions of self care specifically on social media, it's not so much care as it is control and consumption. So it's very product focused. It's very focused on what can you buy, and it's very focused beyond that on, like, aesthetics. What will look like self care? What can I take a picture or a video of that will get me views as being an authority on self care?

Jessica DeFino:

It's very performative.

Georgia Hampton:

The products in all those clips you just heard, they're skin care products, and no other industry has quite so aggressively and confidently adopted the concept of self care as the beauty industry. Beauty brands have always presented their products as tools for fixing.

Clip:

Miss Sally, if I had your complexion disposed, Henry wouldn't what Hilda? Help me. What's wrong with my face, miss Sally?

Clip:

This same kind of dirt

Clip:

was made just radioactive enough to register on a Geiger counter. Only about 20% of visible aging

Clip:

is chronological. The majority is environmental.

Clip:

This rich souffle cream reprograms, recharges, and rehydrates your skin, keeping it in a protective, timeless

Georgia Hampton:

Not just eliminating the appearance of fine lines or under eye bags or to color correct your skin, but to fix everything in your life. And now, under the banner of self care, a serum isn't just something you use to brighten or hydrate your skin. It's a tool of self actualization. Feeling good now means that you are doing good for your soul and that is good for the world. As an example, the company Self Made offers something called the secure attachment comfort serum, which promises to both quote, help you build trust in your skin and your sense of self with every step.

Georgia Hampton:

The brand also recommends you buy the serum in tandem with a copy of the book Attached, The New Science of Adult Attachment and how it can help you find and keep love. And yes, you can buy both on the self made website. Jessica wrote about this exact thing in her newsletter. And in our conversation, she explained the simple power of how the beauty industry co opted all of this terminology.

Jessica DeFino:

So we see self care increasingly being messaged as skin care, like skin was just swapped for self, and that has really taken off in the culture. Like, the past 8 years, skin care has skyrocketed. And when you ask consumers about their associations with skin care, very few of them consider it to be like a superficial practice or a beauty practice. They very much associate it with care, with health, with feeling good, and I think that's kind of a a concerning association that that we need to look at.

Georgia Hampton:

As a customer, buying something can feel good, but that's not self care. It's retail therapy. It's shopping in order to temporarily boost your mood, and there's a ton of studies that show that retail therapy does work in its way. It does offer your brain a quick zap of serotonin and even a brief sense of control. Like, maybe I can't do anything about the state of the world, but one thing I can do is buy something for myself, and that's all fine and good.

Georgia Hampton:

But then why is skin care being advertised to me as if it's a cognitive behavioral exercise given to me by my therapist?

Jessica DeFino:

Beauty in the world functions as an ethical ideal, and brands are invested in upholding that so that you not only feel compelled to participate in the beauty industry as a consumer, but you feel compelled as, like, a human being with a with a moral compass to participate in in the beauty industry.

Georgia Hampton:

And this shift towards skin care as self care has everything to do with the political landscape of the United States.

Jessica DeFino:

I don't think the beauty industry boom of the past 8 years, like, coinciding with a lot of political moments in US history is a coincidence at all. I think it is a cultural reaction to far right politics. It's a cultural reaction that conveniently furthers that movement's political goals of subjugation, of control, of, you know, very strictly enforcing gender roles. We have less control over our bodies than ever before, and the rest of the control of our bodies has been outsourced to us through consumerism, through beauty standards. I think a great example of this is looking at 2016 at the election of president Donald Trump and the messaging of care, as like a political necessity at that point and how it morphed into basically cosmetic manipulation of the individual body.

Jessica DeFino:

After the election, people felt very out of control. People felt very upset. It was a chaotic time, understandably. We start seeing more messaging in the media about the importance of taking care of yourself in these sort of fraught political times.

Georgia Hampton:

The same thing is happening now in the wake of Donald Trump winning the presidency for a second time, the same exhaustion and the same need for something to make things feel less miserable.

Jessica DeFino:

It's really hard to figure out how to take care of yourself in these sort of, like, deep ways, and it's very easy to feel like, oh, I'm taking care of myself, and this is a political act, and all it takes is me buying something on Amazon. All it takes is me getting a a sheet mask and wearing it for 20 minutes. Like, that's a very compelling message, and people were tired and people were exhausted, and this seemed like a way to do something that was good for you in just like a really easy, you know, add to cart, click and buy sort of way.

Georgia Hampton:

When the world feels like it's on fire and you're exhausted, I mean, you'd be forgiven if you had the thought, what the hell? I'll try anything to just feel a little bit better for, like, a second. And that ease invites you to just not think too hard about why you're being sold this particular thing or why you feel like you have to buy it. And there's so much language around this process to encourage you to close your 3rd eye and click place order, stuff like treat yourself or let people enjoy things or the many meme iterations of the horrors persist, but so do the little treats.

Jessica DeFino:

I think another adage that's popped up at the same time is there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, where that used to be a very radical thing to say in order to encourage people to Yes. Think more deeply about the system of capitalism and and what can be done about it and is now sort of this, like, sort of defeatist message where, well, oh, if there's no ethical consumption under capitalism, then what I consume doesn't actually matter and has no broader impact. And I might as well just buy whatever I want because it's not gonna be ethical anyway. And it's really, I think, encouraged people to separate their spending habits and their consuming habits from their values when originally, I think that statement was meant to help us incorporate our values into our spending and consuming habits.

Georgia Hampton:

I mean, that sounds like a metaphor for what has happened to self care.

Jessica DeFino:

Yes. Completely. Completely.

Georgia Hampton:

I wanna read just a little bit more of that Audre Lorde quote from before. This starts a few lines earlier. Sometimes, I feel like I am living on a different star from the one I am used to calling home. It has not been a steady progression. I had to examine in my dreams as well as in my immune function tests, the devastating effects of overextension.

Georgia Hampton:

Overextending myself is not stretching myself. I had to accept how difficult it is to monitor the difference. Audra Lord wrote this while battling cancer, and caring for herself as a black queer woman dying in the 19 eighties was a genuinely radical thing. It was rest not just for the sake of rest, but rest in spite of a world that would deny that act and would demand instead that she over exert herself. Self care was, for her, learning to distinguish between stretching and straining.

Georgia Hampton:

Lorde also wrote that these moments of caring for the self were mingled with the constant difficulties of her treatment as these, quote, drastic life changes laced together with the eternal ordinary. To her, self care does not and cannot banish the difficulty of life. It exists alongside it, around it, and within it. Lorde's approach to caring for herself was about finding the quiet, mundane, momentary joys and moments of peace that life can offer in the midst of suffering. Living longer isn't the goal.

Georgia Hampton:

For Lorde, it couldn't be the goal. Instead, prioritizing care and rest provided a chance for a life lived with depth and sweetness shared with the people in one's life who matter most. This is the complete opposite of what the beauty industry would have me believe self care is. There's no community here. This version of self care would rather I exist in my own siloed space buying skin care products to extend the appearance of youth in my face, not to live longer, but maybe to look like I have lived better by virtue of how smooth and poreless my skin looks.

Georgia Hampton:

But buying toner isn't something that adds depth to my life, it's just me by myself buying toner on the Internet. The skin care industry epidermis, and it's care only so long as that good feeling of buying something lasts. And when that zing of serotonin goes away, you still have all these products. And I don't know about you, but, personally, having to apply eye cream and retinol and double cleansing and doing an overnight face mask, I mean, it's still a lot of work.

Jessica DeFino:

What the beauty industry calls care is aesthetic labor. According to beauty brands, you will find peace, ease, and fulfillment through the pursuit of beauty. You will project health and wellness. You will be happy and whole. So there's a real capitalization on this idea of, like, selfhood and and being the best version of yourself.

Jessica DeFino:

If we look at the data of what's actually happening with beauty and with people who are participating in the beauty industry. We're seeing the exact opposite. We're seeing people wanting to care for themselves and actually not doing it because they've been taught a definition of care that has very little to do with actual care. So people are feeling burnt out, and they're saying, why do I feel burnt out? I'm caring for myself so much when actually what you're doing is, you know, 12 step skin care routines and a red light face mask and quarterly Botox injections and feeling like, what?

Jessica DeFino:

I'm caring for myself. Why don't I feel good? Part of that too is just we need to learn, how to differentiate between, like, immediate relief and long term care. Immediate relief of feeling bad is not the same thing as feeling good, And the beauty industry really does sell us, like, immediate relief from an insecurity that over time actually just feeds that that insecurity or that that feeling of unwellness.

Georgia Hampton:

An enormous thank you to Jessica Defino. Talking to her was such a delight, and it was genuinely very, very hard to pair our conversation down for this segment. And there's so much more worth saying about the beauty industry and skincare that I didn't get a chance to dive into, so I'd be really curious to hear from you about your relationship to self care and skin care. If you found a way for skin care to truly be a self care practice for you, I would love to hear about it. Or, I mean, if the opposite is true, that's also super interesting.

Georgia Hampton:

Either way, the links for how to contact us are in the show notes.

Mike Rugnetta:

Paige. I have a lot of friends who are very online. Sometimes, their jobs are online. Sometimes their hobbies are online. For a small number, their jobs and their hobbies are online.

Mike Rugnetta:

A combination of circumstances about which I am increasingly worried, But for others, still neither is the case. Neither their jobs nor hobbies are online. They do not, strictly speaking, need to post, and yet they do. And I see a number of them struggle with this fact, publicly, privately. And I can't help but wonder why subject oneself as much as they do to the stressors of social media in particular.

Mike Rugnetta:

The flood of news, The irritating interlocutors. The surveillance. Is it out of some desire to stay informed? Is it out of, FOMO or habit? I mean, they don't purposefully get in the car during rush hour traffic.

Mike Rugnetta:

Why log on if you don't need to? When I saw that Rusty Foster, who you might remember from our episode 0 independent media round table, was logging off to hike the Appalachian Trail, I thought, wow. Truly braver than the troops. The most online of us. Disconnecting to literally touch grass for an extended period of time.

Mike Rugnetta:

When Rusty landed back home after a little bit last month, I reached out to ask him about his experience, which involves less fully logging off than I had originally assumed, but just as much thoughtfulness as I've come to expect from everything Rusty does. Joining me is Rusty Foster, writer and former computer programmer. In 2013, Rusty began Today in Tabs, a media and Internet centric link aggregating newsletter first syndicated by Newsweek and Fastco Labs. After a multi year hiatus, Tabs was relaunched in 2021 as an independent reader supported newsletter. That is until May of 2024 when Rusty took a break to hike the Appalachian Trail, during which Rusty wrote Today on Trail which was partially syndicated by Washington Post's opinion section.

Mike Rugnetta:

Rusty, thank you so much for joining us and welcome home.

Rusty Foster:

Thanks. Thank you for having me. I've been home for a little bit more than a week.

Mike Rugnetta:

How are you feeling?

Rusty Foster:

Allergic. Very very sniffly. After 4 months in the fresh air, I'm it turns out allergic to my house. No. Otherwise, I don't know.

Rusty Foster:

Kind of I feel like I'm at home, but, kind of also on vacation at my own house because I don't know what to do with myself. I am not going directly back to a job. Tabs isn't scheduled to restart until, like, February. So I have a pretty long break to think about what comes next. Just done a lot of cleaning, basically.

Mike Rugnetta:

That sounds like a wise way of slowly reacclimating yourself to civilization as it were. So real quick, how many miles did you walk?

Rusty Foster:

1333.

Mike Rugnetta:

Over about how many days?

Rusty Foster:

It was a 127 days.

Mike Rugnetta:

That's a good clip. Do you know, like, roughly how much weight you were carrying on average?

Rusty Foster:

22 to £27 was a sort of a normal day.

Mike Rugnetta:

How many pairs of shoes did you go through?

Rusty Foster:

I came home on my 4th pair.

Mike Rugnetta:

How many showers did you get?

Rusty Foster:

You know, once a week maybe.

Mike Rugnetta:

How many bears did you have to fight off?

Rusty Foster:

I only saw 2, and I did not have to fight either of them off.

Mike Rugnetta:

How many pies, cooling on window sills set out by sweet old grandmas were you caught on the wafts of finding yourself unable to resist pilfering a slice?

Rusty Foster:

0. The the hunger is legendary, and I don't feel like I ever quite got to the point where I was, like, as hungry as people legendarily get.

Mike Rugnetta:

Interesting.

Rusty Foster:

I, yeah, I spent years, like I've lifted weights for years and like thinking about protein and counting protein grams per day. And like, well, you can't build muscle without any protein. And like, then I went out hiked for 4 months and ate, you know, donuts and ramen jerky sticks, like meat sticks.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yep.

Rusty Foster:

And then like Nora rice sides for dinner, basically. So that, and then fill in candy bars in, in between those things. And like, my legs are unbelievably muscular now. You can definitely build muscle on a diet that crappy.

Mike Rugnetta:

How many posts do you think you read while you were on the trail?

Rusty Foster:

Actually, like, kind of a lot. Probably more than you would think.

Mike Rugnetta:

Okay.

Rusty Foster:

Online was kind of a comfort to me in in difficult times in a lot of ways.

Mike Rugnetta:

Can you tell me a little bit more about that? And also, like, in what ways did your relationship to the internet change when you were outside?

Rusty Foster:

There are 2 things that come to mind. And one was early in the trail in New Hampshire. When I was, I was still hiking with my son, Micah, I was having a hard time in New Hampshire. It was like, the weather was really bad. The mountains are really big in New Hampshire and it is just they're relentless.

Rusty Foster:

They they just it's mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain, mountain. And then you get a little, like, you go down to a road and you go to town and spend 1 night in a motel, and then you go back to the trail and it's like 5 more mountains. So probably the, the lowest point that I got to on trail was the, in the Garfield Ridge shelter, which is in the Penny Wilderness. It's a pretty remote section of New Hampshire. And this was just an open lean to, it was one of the coldest days that we had.

Rusty Foster:

And I just, after a really difficult day, we got to the Garfield Ridge shelter and I was very cold. I was having trouble warming up in the shelter. I dragged myself back out to where you were allowed to cook and I made a cup of hot chocolate. And then I went back into the shelter and, you know, huddled in my, in my sleeping bag and put all the clothes that I were still dry that I had on, which was not many. And then I discovered that there was cell service at the shelter, which a lot of New Hampshire there isn't any signal at all.

Rusty Foster:

And it was actually pretty good. And I, you know, I logged into the tabs discord where like tabs readers hang out and chatted with people there a little bit. And it like between that and the hot chocolate, it like really kind of saved my mood. Like I just the knowledge that there were other people out there having regular lives, like in their homes, like warm and comfortable that I could contact in some way that I could like talk to. I don't know.

Rusty Foster:

It made me feel better. Like Yeah. And And I feel like that's what the that's what the Internet was kind of for originally. That's what drew it to me in the first place. And I was, like, a lonely teenager who, you know, had trouble talking to people.

Rusty Foster:

But, yeah, the other time it really helped was towards the end of the hike. It got pretty lonely. Like I didn't see a lot of people, so it was nice to sort of when I I'd, you know, I'd get ready for bed, I'd make my dinner and then I'd like bring up the discord or check-in with my group chat or scroll some posts. And it was sort of like something to do and something that you keep kind of connected to other people.

Mike Rugnetta:

And it sounds like also maybe crucially like a I don't wanna say a treat because it sounds like it was maybe a little bit more sustaining than a treat would be, but Yeah. More intentional than a reflex. And that maybe that is important, in some way.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah. It did stop being a reflex. There was a while where I would I would take my phone out and look at it, and then just sort of, like, squint, like, I'm trying to remember something, and then just put it away. Because I was like, I remember there was really nothing useful I could look at. That.

Rusty Foster:

It's like about a month to go away. You know, I, I use my phone a lot for other purposes. So like there's a, there's an app that pretty much everybody uses called far out. The app has like, way points for water, trail, crossings, shelters, towns, like stores, anything that you might be interested in as a through. And people can leave comments on all of those.

Rusty Foster:

So, you know, if you want to know if a particular water source coming up is flowing or not, you pull it up in the app and then you look at the comments and you see it, like, what was the most recent comment? And did they say whether it was flowing or not? You know, I posted some, like, everybody posts some. And it's you don't have to be online for that. It periodically refreshes if you get online.

Mike Rugnetta:

Interesting. I had no idea that the Appalachian Trail had, like, you know, posts effectively.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah. I mean, hiking the trail is not non technological anymore, honestly. Pretty much everybody is navigating with cell phones. Everybody's carrying the little Garmin in reach tracking devices. So we all have satellite connectivity if we need to.

Rusty Foster:

It's always like the hike has always been a social experience, but it's also kind of online social now as well. It's like a social media experience in some ways.

Mike Rugnetta:

So, yeah. I mean, you didn't really have, like, this cold turkey, like, you're getting off the internet. You're done. You're not gonna look at stuff. You're not gonna post things.

Mike Rugnetta:

Because you did today on Trail.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah.

Mike Rugnetta:

And for people who haven't read it, like, one of the through themes of the thing is your relationship with your son, Micah

Rusty Foster:

Yeah.

Mike Rugnetta:

And deciding, you know, how how and if you will, you know, walk the trail together. And there's like, you know, there are some really beautiful moments, like, thinking through, like, what parenting is. And, you know, I think at one point you talk about how, you know, this was a way for you to have an experience where you both learn how to relate to one another as adults.

Rusty Foster:

You know,

Mike Rugnetta:

like the thing that's great about tabs is like how you notice stuff and how you connect things in this wide open field. And it turns out you can still do that when you're in a literal wide open field. Like you're, you know, you're still really good at noticing things, how these things relate and how they impact your experience of the environment. One of the things that that does, I think in reading it is like really dismantle the dichotomy between someone who is terminally online and a grass toucher. That like it's really, you can see how they are not necessarily mutually exclusive.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah, no, they're not. And I've, I mean, I've always been a grass toucher. Like this is goes way back. It's this isn't new for me being out in the wilderness and stuff. No, I think the dichotomy is, is a lot less rigid than people think.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah. There are definitely like sort of completely off the grid hippies out there in the wilderness. And there's also like people who are wildly online and never leave their rooms. But I think that most of us are in between.

Mike Rugnetta:

Usually, like, maybe twice a year, I try to take like a month or 2 just like off of the Internet, which really means like off of social media. Mhmm.

Mike Rugnetta:

I've

Mike Rugnetta:

been doing this for almost 10 years probably. And every time I'm about to have one of these short hiatuses, I almost always get a little bit scared and I can't exactly say what of, but I feel like I'm about to give up something and like, maybe like, I'm gonna regret it. And I'm curious if you experience any of that sort of like fear or trepidation or an unsurety and like a negative sort of sense.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah. For a long time, the thing that I was afraid of was like, what if this is my one shot? What if this is the one thing that I'm good at and that I could be like known for or could be successful at? And if I walk away from it, what am I going to do? Like, what else do I have?

Rusty Foster:

I have no idea. I wasn't, I didn't feel that way this time. I was like, excited to get offline this time. I was like, I thought I would be more offline than I ended up being actually also. It was like, I ended up feeling like I probably used the internet the way, like a blue collar worker does like somebody who works with their hands.

Rusty Foster:

Cause I would like, I'd scroll a little bit in the morning while I had breakfast and then I'd get walking and I'd walk for several hours and then I'd have a little break and maybe check-in on blue sky while I was having a snack. And then like maybe once or twice more during the day. And then like after, you know, when I went to go to bed, I'd like look at tech talk for an hour if I had good internet service and then I'd like watch a TV show on my phone.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah.

Rusty Foster:

So it was very much like, oh, I have a little bit of time and I'm like physically comfortable and relaxing for a few minutes. And I can do this little, like to shut my brain off for a minute and see what's going on in the world, like peak out and see what's going to see what's up and make sure I didn't miss any miss anything that I care about, which I almost never did.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah.

Rusty Foster:

And then like, get back to it, like put some music on and walk some more. The sense of balance that that brought was nice.

Mike Rugnetta:

And I think that something you just said is really powerful and like something that's really easy to just move right past, which is to check-in to make sure that I didn't miss anything that was important. And I almost never did.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah.

Mike Rugnetta:

And I think it's really easy to convince yourself that everything is important.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah. The stuff that happens online that isn't directed at you, like isn't aimed specifically at you is almost never important enough to interrupt, like, literally anything else that you might be doing.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah. Rusty, I read this thing recently that I would just love to get your reaction to. So, these folks did some research about people who, how much people would pay if they had to pay to access social media. And it turns out it's a lot. That like college students in general would pay between $30.50 if they had to to access things like Instagram and TikTok.

Rusty Foster:

Mhmm.

Mike Rugnetta:

However, in the same study, they also figured out, and this is I'm gonna just gonna quote them. Most of the TikTok users, 64% and almost half of Instagram users, 48%, were prepared to also be able to pay to be off them so long as others were also off them.

Rusty Foster:

Mhmm.

Mike Rugnetta:

So as long as other people are not on. Yeah. People would actually be willing to pay to not have to check social media.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah. That makes sense.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah. What about because it makes sense to me too. What about that makes sense to you?

Rusty Foster:

Because, you know, especially if you're a young young person, social media becomes like a job that you don't get paid for. Like Instagram and Tik TOK have become a crucial piece of social plumbing intentionally designed to be like all encompassing and completely engaging and like take up all as much of your time as they possibly can. And if that tool is the critical plumbing for your entire social life, Then like, yeah, it starts to feel like a huge burden and like a job you never applied for and you don't want, but that if you don't keep up with it, then you're going to be sitting there with all your friends and have no idea what they're talking about. So, yeah, like it makes sense where there's a lot of people who are like, I wish I didn't have to do this, but it's worth it to keep my friends. But if I could pay to make sure that none of us were on it and we all had to start the same, like baseline of like, just things that we saw in real life, then like, great.

Rusty Foster:

I would do that for sure. Like, that totally makes sense to me.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah. Like you said, the all encompassing nature of, like, an Instagram or a TikTok means that there's just there's tons of stuff that you can miss out on.

Rusty Foster:

Yeah.

Mike Rugnetta:

And whether or not the social cost of missing those things is high, it can feel like it's

Rusty Foster:

high. I am not deep in my heart convinced that the cost is actually that high. I don't think it. I think most people could get away with maybe 5 to 10% of their current level of social media use. Again, be like 90 to 95% as conversant with all the stuff that they want to be.

Rusty Foster:

Those are just numbers I completely pulled out of my ass. But

Mike Rugnetta:

I but I

Rusty Foster:

I think it's the truth.

Mike Rugnetta:

They comport with how I feel. I think it's the truth. My long standing opinion is that the fear of missing out is incredibly real, but the missing out doesn't really happen. The actual missing out is not real. Or less real

Rusty Foster:

than me. That was my experience in 4 months on the trails that I didn't I didn't miss very much.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah.

Rusty Foster:

It was nice to spend the last 4 months, like, not stressing about the presidential election. I wasn't really paying attention to it. And it turns out that that was exactly as effective as everybody who was paying attention to it.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah. There's these posts where you're talking about how, you know, everything's wet. You're, you're soaking wet. You're thinking about, like, what it is that you're gonna wear in a rainstorm that you might not be able to wear later. And what is the trade off of like being slightly drier now versus being warm later?

Mike Rugnetta:

Like all of these very, practical and embodied problems. And it really makes me think about like social media being super good at appraising you of problems that aren't problems yet.

Rusty Foster:

Or that will essentially never be your problem.

Mike Rugnetta:

Never. Yeah. And that like It would never be a problem that

Rusty Foster:

you can technically that you can physically do anything about.

Mike Rugnetta:

Do anything about. And like that sort of masquerades as like preparedness. Like, if you know about this, you're prepared, but you're not. And in fact, it often distracts you from the actual things that you can be involved in, and that are actual current problems that you could interface with. And how does one, not even fully, but even partially sort of like step back from being so plugged in?

Rusty Foster:

I, yeah, I have no idea. What I'm realizing is not that social media is boring. It's that, it's a thing that I do when I am bored and it doesn't, for the most part, it doesn't really fix that problem. Like it doesn't fix the problem of being bored. It fixes the problem of like, I'm too tired to do anything else.

Rusty Foster:

Like TikTok is great for that. It's like I'm exhausted and I need to stare at my phone for half an hour and then go to sleep. Good. I'm gonna look at, you know, 430 second videos. That's the perfect way.

Rusty Foster:

The perfect thing to do when you can do literally nothing else. But first thing in the morning, when you're like, I was just drinking coffee, like I scroll and it's like, there's nothing. Nothing grabs me the way it used to sometimes. And I don't know. I don't have any solutions.

Rusty Foster:

Whatever the new relationship I need to have with social media, I don't have it yet. So I'm just sort of paying attention to how I feel when I'm using it.

Mike Rugnetta:

Yeah. What am I doing?

Rusty Foster:

I keep, I keep finding myself like looking for an app, but I can't figure out what it is. It's like, there's like a missing limb in some way. There's like something that I would rather be doing and I don't know what it is. And maybe it's like, you know, I spent a lot of time looking at maps. Like that was a big part of my, like, staring at my phone time was looking at the map, looking at what's coming up.

Rusty Foster:

What's going to happen tomorrow and the next day. Where's the next town that I'm going to stop at, like doing that kind of logistics stuff, which I'm just not doing anymore. Maybe it's that, but I don't know. I wouldn't, it feels like is I'm looking for the social media app that I found engaging before the hike. And it's the same ones I'm using now.

Rusty Foster:

I'm just not finding engaging anymore.

Mike Rugnetta:

Or is it, I mean, is it possible that you're looking for the sort of quick information dense and immediately useful information of what you got on the trail?

Rusty Foster:

Yeah. I mean, yeah. And it is. I think that the time that I get bored using it is the time it takes to like eat a Snickers and then rest for a little bit. Yep.

Rusty Foster:

Which is, actually, like, probably a pretty good length of time to look at social media. Like, it's it's a treat. But it's not a meal. It's not meant to be sustenance, you know? Yeah.

Rusty Foster:

Sustenance is, Little Debbie snacks and ramen.

Mike Rugnetta:

Now you should get a That's

Rusty Foster:

what you're meant to live on.

Mike Rugnetta:

The app version of that is, and we're all set. Yeah. Rusty, thank you so much for joining us on Neverpost for a few minutes in the midst of your busy cleaning schedule. Really appreciate it.

Rusty Foster:

Well, you keep I could do another hour if

Mike Rugnetta:

you want.

Rusty Foster:

I'm good.

Mike Rugnetta:

You just have, like underneath the refrigerator waiting for you and, you know, no one wants to get that project started. Yeah. Where, in these intervening months can, and should people find you online?

Rusty Foster:

My posting these days is on blue sky. So I'm, rusty at today, tabs dot com on blue sky today on trail. I'm gonna keep posting to that for a little while. At least I owe them a, like I'm home post and there'll probably be a few follow ups from after the trail.

Mike Rugnetta:

Nice.

Rusty Foster:

Apart from that, I don't know who knows what's next. I don't know yet.

Mike Rugnetta:

Thanks a million to Rusty for having this conversation with me. You can read both the Today on Trail and Today in Tabs archives at the link we've put in the show notes. Do you have periods, extended or otherwise, where you purposefully log off? What are those experiences like? Do you not have those experiences, but wish you did?

Mike Rugnetta:

What feelings are stopping you? What's the roadblock? We wanna hear about it. Call us, email us, send us a voice memo. There are links in the show notes, and we may include your response in a future Mailbag episode.

Clip:

It's Christmas Eve at Grammy's house, and Georgia is entertaining us with some tunes here. Here's that Georgia. Is coming to town. Are you? Because I think he is tonight.

Clip:

Did he? Let's hear it. Okay. He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake.

Clip:

He knows if you've been bad or good so again for goodness sake. You better not shout. You better not cry. You better not pout. I'm telling you why Santa Claus is coming 2 tall,

Mike Rugnetta:

That is the show we have for you this week. We're gonna be back here on the main feed on January 1st with never posts, perhaps first annual, we'll see how you like it, Post Mortem 2024, a year in review, Internet themed quiz show with some of your and our favorite Internet ne'er do wells. It's gonna be a blast. In the meantime, happy every holiday so as to not leave anyone out, and also New Year. We hope you have a good one doing exactly what you wanna do with precisely whomst you choose to do it.

Mike Rugnetta:

Never Post is an independent staff owned podcast with no funding, no runway, no production partners. Become a member today to help us keep making this show into and through 2025, during which we are, reasonably sure independent critical perspectives on technology and the Internet will be even more crucial than they are now, if such a thing is even possible. Never poe.st to become a member, and may we guide each other through the murky expanse of the blasted late capitalist technological heath. Never Post's producers are Audrey Evans, Georgia Hampton and the mysterious, doctor first name, last name. Our senior producer is Hans Buto.

Mike Rugnetta:

Our executive producer is Jason Oberholzer. The show's host, That's Me, is Mike Rugnetta. No one needs us again of earth and clay. No one conjures our dust. No one.

Mike Rugnetta:

Praised be thou, no one. For your sake we want to flower. Tort you. Psalm, by Paul Celan, translated by Pierre Jori. Never Post is a production of charts and leisure.